A Sink of Atrocity: Crime in 19th-Century Dundee

by Archibald, Malcolm

  Although the population of Dundee grew year on year, the numbers of the police establishment were remarkably constant. The 1837 Dundee Directory states there were eleven day patrols, six night patrols and just thirty-six watchmen that year; while the 1841 issue of the same publication says that with the population around 62,000 there was one lieutenant, one sergeant major, four sergeants, one turnkey for the cells, twelve day patrols, four night patrols and thirty watchmen. According to the record of 1850, there were 70,000 people in Dundee in that year, and the police establishment had altered into something more recognisable. Under the superintendence of Donald Mackay, there was John Cameron, the lieutenant of police, two criminal officers, six police sergeants, two street sergeants, forty-three constables and one female turnkey to care for those women who were under arrest.

  The criminal officer was what we now term a detective, a policeman working in civilian clothing whose primary function was to solve crimes after they had been committed, rather than the uniformed officer whose duty was more crime prevention or on-the-spot arrest. Although the British Criminal Investigation Department began in 1844 when Sir James Graham, the Home Secretary, allowed a dozen police sergeants to shed their uniforms, local superintendents throughout the country had already used plain clothed police. These men had been known as ‘active officers’ and were probably disliked with even greater fervour than the uniformed men. In March 1842 the superintendent had recommended Dundee should have two criminal officers. He had already experimented with two active officers, George Reid and Hope Ramsay, and was so satisfied with the results he was prepared to do without an orderly to pay them their eighteen shillings a week wages.

  Those in Charge

  The early police superintendents were not always successful. According to historian J.M. Beatts, the first was a tailor called John Low, who only lasted a few months. Then came Alexander Downie, who reigned from 1824 to 1825. He was an old military man who had fought in the Peninsular War under Wellington but was now retired on half pay. John Home was next, and he restored some of the faith in the police as he lasted in the job for some nine years until 1834 and had a good reputation. James Drummond followed, and then the position again became vacant.

  In October 1839 the Dundee Advertiser placed a notice looking for a new Superintendent of Police in 1839. The town sought a man of ‘superior qualifications’ and offered a salary of £120 a year with a free house with coal and gas light. As well as policing, the job included inspecting the lighting and cleaning and acting as public prosecutor in the police court. Of the fifty men who came forward, David Corstorphan was selected. He was a fair choice and during his tenure there are some traces of humanity within the service. When John Ker, a policeman of four years’ service, died in early 1841, David Corstorphan handed over £4 11/- to his widow. It was hardly a pension, but still a nice token for the time. Corstorphan died in late 1841.

  As for his successor, Joseph Maddison, his term of office is mercifully forgotten. In 1842 there was a surge in crime in York and Maddison became superintendent of a local police force. Unfortunately he used the position to embezzle police funds, but by the time he was found out he had already been appointed superintendent of the Dundee police.

  The next appointee was a Caithness man, Donald Mackay, and proved probably the most successful of the early superintendents. He had been working in Dunfermline and when he left, fifty of his friends entertained him to a farewell dinner and presented him with a gold watch and chain, so he had made an impression in Fife. Mackay remained in the position

  until 1876, when David Dewar took over until 1909.

  ‘Kill the Buggers’

  Regardless of who was in command, December seemed to be a bad month for attacks on the police, and 1833 was no exception. On the night of Saturday 1st December, Constable Peter Mackenzie was on his beat when somebody called for assistance. He hurried to the Witchknowe, where a man named Alexander Farquharson had been causing trouble. Mackenzie knew Farquharson had a bad reputation, so arrested him there and then. That should have been the end of the matter, but as he headed for the police office, some of the crowd moved forward. Outnumbered, Mackenzie had little chance and the mob released his prisoner, but when police reinforcements arrived they succeeded in driving a wedge into the crowd and grabbing Farquharson back.

  Rather than withdraw, the crowd became more threatening, chanting, ‘Kill the buggers! Kill the buggers!’ There were more skirmishes; the crowd overpowered an officer and grabbed his staff and from then onward it was a running battle, with a chanting crowd around 300 strong threatening and fighting with the police. They reached the Overgate at one o’clock on Sunday morning and people stared from windows lit and unlit as the police and the mob battled for possession of the prisoner. The crowd pressed hard, knocking down the police like ninepins, and the arrival of more police only aggravated the situation.

  Eventually the police gave up. With most of them walking wounded, they released Farquharson. As the crowd began to drift home, job done, the police, battered and bleeding, picked up a few they believed had been most prominent in the riot. These men appeared before Baillies Kidd and Christie at the Police Court on Monday morning and denied all the charges. They had apparently been innocently walking along the Overgate and were surprised to be arrested. The court thought otherwise: the flax dressers Peter Drysdale, John Wynd and Martin Watson, together with the weaver Colin Gallagher, were found guilty. Drysdale, Gallagher and Watson were fined the maximum £5 with an alternative of sixty days, with Wynd fined £2 or thirty days.

  Incidents where the crowd interfered to rescue a prisoner were all too common. On 17th November 1835, the arrest of James Gibson, a drunken shoemaker and hawker, started another riot. When the police reached Barrack Street, Gibson bellowed for help and a crowd swarmed across. The resulting stramash saw one policeman with minor injuries, three seriously hurt, a flax dresser named John Mackay arrested and a ten-guinea reward offered for the names of the rioters.

  There was another anti-police riot in June 1836 when a well-known Hilltown troublemaker named James Storier led a mob who rescued a prisoner. The police arrested Storier not long afterward. At the beginning of November 1843 a Dundee mob again rose against the police. This time the trouble started when William McCrae, an Irish weaver at Easson’s Factory in Victoria Street, had attacked one of his colleagues. A policeman arrested McCrae, but as they left the factory, William’s brother Samuel launched a furious attack, freed the prisoner and ran away. Picking himself off the ground and dusting himself down, the policeman sought help. The policeman guessed the McCraes would be in their father’s house, and so he went there, booting open the front door, only to see the brothers escape out a skylight and onto the roof, where they danced and jeered at their pursuers. Unwilling to follow through the skylight, the police borrowed ladders from the men who worked Dundee’s fire engines, captured the McCraes and brought them back in handcuffs. As usual, a crowd had gathered to see what all the commotion was about, and now attacked the police. There was the usual barrage of missiles as the police eased through Hilltown. Forced to take refuge in a shop until reinforcements arrived, the police lost control of Samuel McCrae, but grabbed a brace of bakers named Bogue and Reid in exchange. By the time they reached St Clements Lane all the police were more or less injured, one seriously, and they must have wondered if their job was worth all the fuss.

  By the mid-nineteenth century there was an army garrison in Dudhope Castle. Strangely, given the bad reputation soldiers carried, they rarely bothered the police although there were occasional incidents. One occurred in February 1844 when Private William Maxwell of the 92nd Highlanders was on sentry duty at the barrack gates. Two drunken men, Moses Taggart, a weaver from the Scouringburn, and Robert Tasker, a seaman from Chapelshade, began to antagonise, insult and assault him, but Maxwell retained his discipline and his position as sentinel. When two officers passed, Tasker turned on them, but this time Maxwell did act, fending off Tasker’s punches
and kicks. The police arrested both drunks and after a spell in the Dudhope’s Black Hole, took them to the Police Court where they were awarded a further ten days in jail.

  The next incident was potentially more serious. At midnight on 6th October 1844 a group from the 60th Rifles were causing trouble at the bottom of Crichton Street. The Fish Street watchman hurried over to quieten things down, but the soldiers turned on him. Either the 60th were unpopular or the manhood of Dundee were feeling brave that night, for several came running to help the police, whereupon the soldiers drew their swords – the Rifles’ name for their bayonets. A general melee started, with the police pitting their truncheons against the swords of the soldiers, and the end result was one soldier arrested and given a week in jail. Even when they were alone, soldiers could sometimes be trouble. In October 1853, two men of the 82nd Regiment wandered along Dudhope Crescent, drunk as lords and insulting everybody they met. For some reason they took a strong dislike to a mill overseer named James McLeod. Private James Moran took off his broad belt and attacked McLeod with the buckle end, treating a policeman to the same treatment a moment later. He was rewarded with thirty days in jail.

  Growing Professionalism

  By the 1850s the police were based at Bell Street, where their headquarters still are. According to the 1853 Dundee Directory, Donald Mackay now had Alexander McQueen as First Lieutenant, Alex Mackay as Second Lieutenant and Alexander Webster as Surgeon. There were two criminal officers, one police sergeant, four street sergeants, four night patrols and a force of ninety constables, with one male and one female turnkey. The growing numbers correspond to the expanding city, but each year the police were becoming more proficient. On the last Sunday of February 1853 there was a daylight break-in at a shop in the Seagate. The owner, Mrs Wilson, was at church, and when she returned two hours later she found thieves had forced open a back window that overlooked a small court and taken her cash box.

  The active officers Smith and James were put on the case. Both were experienced men and they traced and arrested the thief and found most of the money buried underground. The case was wrapped up by ten that same night. Smith and James had another success the following day when they saw three young men, McInally, Balmer and Holland, waddling around the town looking very bulky. Taking them to the police office, Smith and James had them strip-searched, to find each with several layers of clothing, all stolen from houses in Dundee’s west end. Further investigation also found some pirns that had been removed from a Blackness Road factory. The three men were arrested.

  By the late 1850s the Dundee police were becoming more sophisticated in crime detection. Early on a Saturday afternoon in September 1858 the manager of the Seafield Works sent a clerk named George Thomson to the bank with over £400. The temptation of such a huge sum proved too much and Thomson absconded with the money. At two o’clock the same afternoon the Seafield Works informed the police, who immediately telegraphed the police offices in the major urban centres in Scotland and England and wrote letters to the smaller towns. They also sent copies of Thomson’s photograph to the main police offices around the country.

  As soon as Superintendent Charles of the Arbroath Police read the letter he alerted his own officers and within an hour they found Thomson and two young women in the White Hart Hotel. A quick search found only £2, but Charles knew his own area and dug out £300 in a house in Applegate and a £100 bank note with a High Street merchant. Travelling on the midnight train, Lieutenant Neil Gunn was in Arbroath before one in the morning, took hold of Thomson and brought him back to Dundee in time for the Monday morning court sitting. As an example of the efficiency of the mid-Victorian police, the case of George Thomason would be hard to best.

  The ordinary beat constable was also becoming professional. Just after midnight on Sunday 18th July 1857 the High Street constable noticed that the door to George Scott’s warehouse in Tyndall’s Wynd was flapping open. Gathering reinforcements, the officer forced the door and arrested a man they found inside. When they questioned their prisoner, the police found he was a ticket of leave convict called James Brown, who kept a legal grocery in the Scouringburn. He was armed with a knife and wore rubber overshoes to deaden his footsteps when engaged on his night-time activities. A search of his house found piles of stolen property, over 200 skeleton keys, carpenter’s tools, hinges, hammer heads, a jemmy and keys that fit Mr Scott’s warehouse. Even more incriminating were the German silver chains and single gold chain that had been stolen from Alston’s jewellery shop in the High Street and a number of cheques stolen from Smith’s china shop in Castle Street. That single observant police constable had brought a notable career thief to justice, and he stands as an example of the growing professionalism of the Dundee police. However, there was still plenty crime in Dundee.

  10

  Thieves of the 1860s

  Buried Treasure

  Although theft and robbery were common throughout the whole of the nineteenth century, the 1860s spawned a clutch of thieves whose exploits rocked Dundee. Usually in their teens and early twenties, most were opportunist thieves who broke into houses and shops alike, stole any small items they could and quickly squandered what they stole. Yet very few were even moderately successful in anything other than causing trouble to their victims. Sometimes even those who appeared to escape justice could be undone by a chance encounter.

  In early May 1861, a seaman named Charles Wilson noticed something half-buried just above the high tide mark on the beach near Craigie Terrace. When he investigated, he unearthed a bread rack, which he took home – seamen were not the highest paid workers and any sort of bonus was always welcome. About a fortnight later he was back, walking along the same stretch of coast but this time accompanied by his sister. It was natural that he should look in the same place, and perhaps he was not surprised that he saw something else protruding from the sand. One article was welcome, two were suspicious and Wilson, or perhaps his sister, informed the police.

  Within minutes of digging, the police found an entire basket of silver plate, each one marked with the letter ‘C’. There were nine silver teaspoons, twelve silver toddy ladles, two plated trays, a magnificent silver teapot, silver tongs, silver snuff boxes and wine sliders, gold studs, table spoons and mustard pots and, pride of the collection, two silver jugs embossed with a crest and the motto ‘God Send Grace’. This final piece immediately identified the hoard. The police were ecstatic. They had made a major discovery and solved one of the largest household burglaries committed in the area for years.

  Many people put the blame on the people of Broughty Ferry for the crime in their area. Not that they had particularly criminal tendencies. Broughty was as law-abiding as anywhere else in Scotland, but also had its share of those who lived on the shaded side of the law. Nevertheless, there was not a single constable to patrol the village and not even a watchman to cast his rheumy eyes over the fishermen’s cottages and the increasing numbers of detached villas and extensive mansions of the incomers who had made their wealth from Dundee’s textile trade.

  As Dundee became busier with trade and the number of mills and factories increased, many of the wealthier citizens opted to leave the smoke-filled streets and head east. Here, beside the long-sweeping beaches of Broughty and backed by green countryside, solid villas sprang up. What had once been only a small fishing village was rapidly becoming one of the most desirable suburbs of Scotland. However, the good and the great were canny with their pennies and had no desire to add to their rates by paying for a police force. The Dundee policemen did not work outwith the perimeters of the burgh, so Broughty was wealthy and Broughty was unprotected.

  For a man such as Thomas MacMillan, the houses of Broughty were an open invitation. He was a professional thief, a man who had already served time for burglary and who had returned to Dundee. At the beginning of June 1858 he selected a victim.

  Archibald Crichton was not as stupendously rich as the jute barons, but he was certainly not poor and the manner in whi
ch he displayed his wealth could have been termed ostentatious. He was also gregarious, and on the last Wednesday in May 1858 he held a magnificent dinner party in his semi-detached villa in Douglas Terrace. To impress his guests, he used his silver plate dinner service, each piece of which was engraved with the letter ‘C’ to prove he owned it. When the dinner was over and the guests departed, the servants washed the silver dinner service but did not put it away; that would wait until Thursday morning.

  Thomas McMillan, however, had other ideas. He had only to wait a short time before the last weary servant extinguished the last light in the house, and another few moments to ensure everybody was safely in bed. In Dundee he would be a suspicious character, lurking around an obviously prosperous street in the wee small hours of the morning, but without police or watchmen to challenge him, he loitered undisturbed. When he judged it safe, MacMillan walked warily to the rear of Crichton’s house and quietly opened the window of the water closet. Presumably he had already reconnoitred the house and knew exactly which window was best, but the water-closet window was small so he had to squeeze through. Once inside he lit a candle and by its flickering yellow light moved immediately to the silver, ready-washed and neatly stacked as if waiting just for him.