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

by Archibald, Malcolm

  It was perhaps a mistake for Mr O’Farrell to add that a police officer had put his head through the gap, for Mr Smith, defending Crockatt, turned the statement to his advantage, using humour against the pawnbroker.

  ‘And is an officer’s head as large as a boy’s body?’

  If he said it was as large, O’Farrell might have been accused of ridiculing the police. If he said it was not, he would be damaging his case. Instead he tried to bluster by saying:

  ‘I don’t know but he looked in between the bars.’

  As the audience laughed, Mr Smith must have known he was a small step closer toward creating a bond of sympathy between Crockatt and the jury.

  The next witness was less easy to manipulate. Peter Duff was a criminal officer, a detective, and his evidence could have been damning. When he searched the pawnshop he had found part of a buckle and when arrested, Crockatt had two half crowns, two shilling pieces and eleven pence halfpenny in copper – nearly eight shillings altogether, which was quite a decent sum for a man not a month out of jail. One of the buckles on Crockatt’s braces was also broken, and although he claimed to have broken it at home, the broken part exactly matched the piece Duff had found. Possibly even more damning for a respectable Victorian jury: Crockatt was known to have the character of a common thief.

  A blacksmith agreed that the two broken parts belonged to the same buckle, ‘because no man could make the same buckle joint’. Nevertheless, when pressed by Mr Smith he agreed he had seen that type of buckle before. It therefore was not unique.

  The Police Surgeon, Doctor George Pirie, said when he examined Crockatt on 18th January he had an abrasion on his shoulder. The sort of mark somebody might get by scraping against a hard surface. Although Doctor Pirie did not say Crockatt might have scraped himself squeezing between two iron bars, the inference was obvious.

  Catherine Crockatt, the already-denied mother, said her son was not at home on the night of the robbery. Crockatt himself claimed to have stayed overnight with a man called Michael Downs, but Downs disagreed. On the surface there seemed to be quite a pile of evidence against Crockatt, but it was all circumstantial. A broken buckle that could have belonged to anybody, a half-seen glance through a window, money in his pocket, a scraped shoulder and a lie as to his whereabouts. The jury were not overly convinced and a majority found the case not proven.

  David Crockatt was free to go and steal again, which he did. Either he was a compulsive thief or just a man with an overwhelming confidence in his ability to evade justice, but within a week he was back under arrest. On this occasion he was suspected of having broken into John Milne’s grocer and spirit dealer’s shop in the Lower Pleasance. Once again there was little subtlety in the robbery; the shop had two windows, one larger than the other and both protected by wooden shutters. The thieves had simply torn out one of the planks of the shutter outside the small window, hauled back the restraining bolts and pulled open the window. They had stolen the till, with between fifteen shillings and a pound in change, and escaped out the same window.

  A mill watchman saw three men emerge from the window and alerted the police, who arrested two men that same night. One was Neill Stevenson and the other was David Crockatt. When the police searched them they both had money and Mr Milne’s sister, who also worked in the shop, claimed to identify one of the coins. She said a customer had handed it to her only the previous day.

  Once again Crockatt’s luck held, for although he was remitted to the Procurator Fiscal, he was not charged for that particular robbery either. Nevertheless, while a more sensible or cautious man would have kept out of trouble for a while, Crockatt seemed hell-bent on thievery. On 13th May another shop was broken into and once again Crockatt was arrested. This time there were four others also accused: Neil Stevenson and Peter McDonald of Scouringburn, Donald Fraser of Ash Lane and John Johnstone of Cherryfield. Again the thieves had escaped with petty quantities: half a pound of tobacco, four pounds of cheese and three shillings in copper coins, but the amount was irrelevant, the repetition was what mattered. Now Crockatt was thrust back into Dundee Jail to await the autumn sitting of the Circuit Court.

  The Dundee Circuit Court did not meet until 5th September, with the Lord Justice Clerk and Lord Cowan presiding. The police had been busy, and while some of their original suspects had been released, others had been arrested. Now Crockatt and Stevenson had Peter McFall and John Johnstone as co-accused. They stood charged with breaking into David Munro’s shop in Lochee Road on 13th May and as expected, they pleaded not guilty.

  David Munro gave his statement first. He said he left his shop between nine and ten o’clock on the night of Thursday 12th May but about three on Friday morning a policeman woke him with the news he had been robbed. There had been no subtlety in the break in: the door had been forced open by bursting the bolts and the money drawer torn out. Between three and five shillings had been stolen, and a purse that held a halfpenny, which he called a cent. That small coin was important, for Munro had kept it for years, never having seen one quite like it before. Some cheese and tobacco were also missing.

  Constable Ward had seen all the prisoners together with young Donald Fraser in the Scouringburn. As soon as they noticed him, one had sworn and said, ‘Here’s that bugger. We’d better shift – he knows us,’ and they disappeared up Milne’s West Wynd. About half-past one Ward saw them again in Douglas Street, and quarter of an hour after that they were in Smellie’s Lane, about 300 yards from Munro’s shop. By that time Constable Ward had joined up with Constable McIsaac, and the sight of two policemen sent the suspects running down Blinshall Street.

  As the youths tried to hide in the shadows, the police followed. Constable Ward heard somebody curse and say, ‘It’s no’ fairly divided,’ but then the suspects passed beyond the bounds of his beat and he had to leave them. When he passed Munro’s shop just before one o’clock the premises were secure, but when he returned at three the door had been burst open.

  There was a whole raft of police constables involved. Constables Cuthbert and Forbes followed the suspects; Constable McIsaac arrested Johnstone and Fraser and Constable Abbott arrested Crockatt. Constable John Graham arrested McFall in Brown Street and later raided Neil Stevenson’s house, hauled him out of bed by the hair and dragged him to Bell Street. When Crockatt was arrested he wore no stockings, but Abbott found one in his pocket and the second, with a piece of tobacco inside, at the spot where he was arrested. McFall had two shillings and sixpence in his pocket. The police also found a piece of cheese in the Lochee Road.

  The criminal officers Henry Ferguson and William Bremner said the prisoners were all common thieves and, according to Bremner, whenever Crockatt was released from prison he haunted the streets of Dundee in the company of ‘famous thieves’.

  As the prisoner least hardened by crime, the police leaned most heavily on Donald Fraser, but it was more likely his mother’s influence that made him co-operate. When he spoke at the trial he admitted knowing all four of the prisoners, and agreed he had been with them on the night of 12th May. According to his account, the evening had started innocently in Barrack Park,‘where we lay till about one o’clock’. After that they wandered up Lochee Road but when they passed Munro’s shop Peter McFall said, ‘We’ll try this ane.’

  Fraser was ordered to keep watch while the others broke in. He said the whole operation took about ten minutes and Peter McFall was out first, carrying money in his bonnet. Crockatt was next, saying, ‘Here’s tobacco, lads,’ and he was followed by Stevenson with the cheese, while Johnston came out empty-handed. As soon as they left the shop they began to run down Lochee Road, with Stevenson already discarding the cheese. The police followed them up Blinshall Street and then they separated. Fraser said that he and Johnston were in Brown Street when they were arrested.

  Neil Stevenson’s mother gave a slightly different story. She agreed that her son had gone out on the night of the 12th, ‘to get some fun’, he had said, but he was back before eleve
n and she saw him in bed beside his brother Nicholas before she locked the door at twelve. She was up at five to waken Nicholas and Neil was still there and ‘he rose because I bade him get a job of work’. When he said the police had chased him she told him to stay in and lock the door, and she was at work when a girl told her he had been arrested. Her third son was already in prison for ‘capering in the street’.

  The defence council for McFall called up a man named Henry Goodwin who claimed that he was with McFall in a public house until eleven o’clock, and after that they walked to Goodwin’s house together. Only then did they meet Fraser, who was with two girls. By this time it was twenty to one in the morning and Fraser asked McFall to give him a dram. Pulling out a bag of coppers, Fraser boasted he had plenty money. When a couple of policemen came into view Fraser gave the money to McFall and walked rapidly away.

  The jury were not convinced and found all four prisoners guilty. The Lord Justice Clerk said, ‘It is with the greatest possibly difficulty’ he did not sentence Crockatt and Stevenson to at least seven years’ penal servitude. He added that they had ‘little knowledge what a sentence of penal servitude is’ and they ‘have very little notion what it entails upon the person subjected to it’. Instead he sentenced Stevenson and Crockatt to eighteen months’ imprisonment. The others were given lesser sentences, and McFall shouted, ‘Cheer up, boys; I’ll be back on Sunday.’

  The others replied, ‘Cheer up,’ but only quietly. Even without penal servitude, eighteen months in a Victorian prison was not a cheering prospect.

  When Crockatt re-emerged at the beginning of March 1872 he was still only twenty years old and had spent most of his late teenage years in jail. Perhaps he had some intention to reform, but possibly his experiences had embittered him against society in general and the police in particular. It is equally possible he had a natural truculence that made it impossible for him to conform to even the slightest show of authority.

  On 18th March 1872, Crockatt strolled around the Scouringburn area with a couple of prostitutes. About two in the afternoon they stopped to talk in a close at the top of Brown Street. The two policemen who challenged them might have genuinely believed they were blocking the passageway, or they might have been suspicious that Crockatt, a known thief, had something illegal in mind. Either way they asked all three to move on. The prostitutes obeyed but Crockatt refused, claiming he lived there. Although Sergeant William Carnegie knew that was a lie, he still gave Crockatt time to leave. Again the police asked him to move on, and again Crockatt refused, and when Constable Robb took hold of his arm to escort him to the pavement, Crockatt slipped his feet between Robb’s ankles and punched him in the chest, knocking him down.

  The result was inevitable. Carnegie and Robb put Crockatt under arrest, Crockatt resisted fiercely with fist and boot but was outnumbered and, after eighteen months on prison rations, outmuscled. He appeared before the Police Court on Thursday, with Bailie Chalmers and Superintendent Donald Mackay glowering at him. As usual, Crockatt pleaded not guilty. After hearing the evidence, Mackay asked if Crockatt had anything to say. He said no, there would be no point in speaking after the police had given their evidence. Mackay probably agreed. He said the police had acted in a ‘prudent and gentle manner’, and their conduct deserved the highest praise. Bailie Chalmers gave Crockatt another sixty days, the maximum he could award.

  Crockatt threw him a look of contempt. ‘That’s not much,’ he said.

  That same year, David Crockatt committed his last recorded crime. After four years of shop breaking and jail, he branched out into something different.

  John Littlejohn was a lapper who lived in Charles Street. Sometime after midnight on Sunday 26th May he was walking up Dens Brae on his way home from work. He had just reached Bucklemaker Wynd when two men jumped on him. While one held him down and clapped a hand over his mouth to keep him quiet, the other went through his pockets and robbed him of what little money he had. Both attackers ran when a couple of late-night walkers arrived. One of the newcomers, Peter Gilligan, chased and brought down the smaller of the attackers, David Crockatt. When the police came, Crockatt resisted, but he was dragged once more to the police office.

  On Monday 27th May David Crockatt of Dudhope Crescent appeared at the Police Court and Bailie Petrie remitted him to the Procurator Fiscal. He was ordered once more to appear in the Circuit Court in October. As usual, Crockatt pleaded not guilty and following the usual pattern, Littlejohn gave his evidence first. He named Crockatt as one of his attackers, and added that, while on his way to the police office, Crockatt had begged not to be identified or he would get ten years.

  The other witnesses told the same story. William Duncan, a packer, saw Littlejohn being attacked, and shouted for Peter Gilligan to help. He had chased the second, taller attacker but had lost him.‘But’ he confirmed, ‘the little one is the prisoner.’

  There could be no doubt about the verdict, and as Crockatt predicted, he got ten years of penal servitude. After he was sentenced he gave a mocking bow and said, ‘Thank you, your lordship,’ but the world heard no more of David Crockatt. Possibly the rigid, inhuman conditions of the crank – that diabolical wheel prisoners had to rotate 14,400 times a day – and the solitary system broke his spirit. It is difficult to feel sympathy for David Crockatt, for he was certainly not a pleasant person, but to have only five or six weeks’ freedom in fourteen years surely argues about not only a failure in his own sordid life, but also a failure in the entire social system.

  Crockatt was only one of a host of petty criminals in the area. Although Dundee, as the largest town in the area, was the centre of most illegal activity, the surrounding countryside could also be wild. Lying to the north of Dundee, the county of Forfarshire, now Angus, is one of the most fertile areas of Scotland. It includes the fruit-growing Strathmore and some of the finest farms as well as some of the most interesting castles and houses to be found anywhere. The northern portion of the county consists of an area known as the Angus Glens, which is in reality the southern hills of the Highlands. To the south is the low, fascinating range of the Sidlaw Hills, crossed by the whisky paths of the smugglers and allegedly recently used for dog fighting matches. Forfarshire was a frontier land between city and Highlands, town and country. Such areas do not breed quiet men and not everybody in this apparently peaceful countryside was law-abiding.

  Armed Robbery at Auchterhouse

  In the nineteenth century, many people did not consider poaching a crime, particularly when the game laws were intended to preserve the property of the landowner against the rural poor. Poachers were often somewhat ambiguous figures. Although some may well have been rural Robin Hoods, and most were just after the odd rabbit or two to supplement a meagre diet, others operated on a larger scale and would probably have been rogues wherever they lived. Such a man was James Robertson, a man of many addresses but who seems to have lived most often in Blairgowrie in Strathmore.

  In the early morning of Wednesday 10th January 1866, somebody burgled the farmhouse of James Playfair at Kirkton of Auchterhouse. The house stood alone in the southern shadow of the Sidlaw Hills and James Playfair lived with his brother. There were also a handful of female servants inside the house. About a quarter of a mile away was the farm steading where the male farm servants lived, for in a period of high rural illegitimacy, young single men and women were often kept apart or under the watchful eye of respectable authority. The farmhouse was typically Scottish, a stone-built, uncompromising building of two stories that unflinchingly endured the winds and frosts, glaring from its tall windows over fields that stretched toward Dundee and the Firth of Tay. The Playfair brothers slept on the upper flat, with the servants on the ground floor, and on the Tuesday the brother was absent on some business. Not long after midnight, something abruptly woke Playfair from his sleep.

  By the flickering light of a candle he saw three men in the room beside him. They all wore different disguises, and all had blackened their faces so they would
not be recognised, but there was no mistaking the pistol that one thrust at Playfair’s head. With a threat to shoot the farmer unless he complied, the intruder demanded to know where the money was. As Playfair stared, a second intruder raised an axe and said he would kill him if he tried to waken the servants or offer the slightest resistance.

  Faced with two armed intruders and with a third hovering nearby, it is unlikely that Playfair had any intention of resisting. He obeyed at once, saying that his money was locked in his wardrobe, and showed where the keys were kept. The intruders did not relax; while the two armed men ensured Playfair did not resist, the third man, quieter but just as efficient, took the keys and opened the drawer of the wardrobe. He took out £84, which Playfair had put there temporarily until he carried it to the bank. He also lifted a gold watch.

  Without searching any further, the three intruders gave a final chilling warning that if Playfair shouted out or warned the servants they would return and murder him in his own bed. Having seen the pistol, the axe and the determinedly disguised faces, Playfair thought it best to do exactly what they said. Only when the intruders were well clear of the house did he rush downstairs and waken the women. Once the alarm was given, the male servants stuffed powder and ball into a fowling piece and began to search the grounds and surrounding fields. However the intruders had not wasted the long minutes gained by their threat. The servants found no trace.