Whisky, Wars, Riots and Murder

by Malcolm Archibald

  In the Inverness Circuit Court of April 1823, Isabella Urquhart was found guilty of fraud and forgery and handed a sentence of seven years’ transportation. On hearing the sentence she broke down in tears.

  At the same court, Margaret Grigor was given twelve months in jail for concealing her pregnancy, which was a crime common among unmarried mothers. However, one of the more spectacular and sadly widespread crimes was child murder. Highland women were no different to those in any other part of the country.

  The Dead Dog in Thurso

  There was nothing extraordinary about James Campbell. He was a typical thirteen-year-old boy who went to school and played with his friends. Late in the afternoon of 20 April 1876 he was playing marbles with a friend, William Sutherland, beside Carnaby’s Close in his home town of Thurso, when one of the marbles rolled into a pile of straw. William Sutherland walked over to retrieve it when he saw something interesting.

  Not all nineteenth-century women were as cheerful as this

  © Author’s Collection

  ‘Come and see this dead dog,’ Sutherland called out, and Campbell came over. He looked closer and saw a body half covered in stones. When he poked around a bit he realised it was not a dog, but the body of a baby boy. Campbell ran to tell his neighbours, who quickly fetched the police.

  The constable uncovered the child and examined him, hoping for life, but he was stone dead. The police called Dr Craven, who said the baby had been born after full term and killed after birth. The police began making enquiries to see if any local women had recently had a baby. Susannah Wilson said she remembered that just after the Wick herring season the previous week a woman named Christina Reid had claimed she was pregnant, but there was no sign of a baby. However, a jury at the circuit court in October were either not so sure or sympathetic to the mother and returned a not proven verdict.

  Others cases were more clear-cut.

  Death in the Black Isle

  Jane Bain was a nineteen-year-old mother with a problem. She was unmarried but had a small son. In 1890 such a combination made for an unhappy woman, for as well as the obvious financial difficulties in raising a child alone, Bain also had the stigma of not being respectable. In any case, even if she did manage to raise her child to manhood, he would also have to carry the burden of illegitimacy all his life.

  On 12 January Bain and her sister, Isabella, came to stay with her aunt, Ann Docherty, at their house on the Braes of Kilcoy in the Black Isle, north of Inverness. Bain had her child with her, a boy about eighteen months old. The Bains stayed with Docherty for about three weeks, during which time Jane offered Docherty ten shillings a week if she would look after the child. Docherty said she would not accept any money but would bring up the child if she had to. On Thursday, 30 January, a little after midday, Jane Bain took her son with her as she walked on the road to Dingwall.

  Bain said she was walking to a place about a mile away. She claimed she had a job sowing there, and would take her son with her. Docherty pointed out that it was a wild, wet day for such a walk and by the time Bain arrived there would not be much daylight left for sowing anyway. In January the light would fade shortly after three. However, Jane was adamant.

  It was well after nine on a dark night before Bain returned, and she came alone. Docherty asked where her son was, Bain said she had put him in the Inverness Poorhouse, but Docherty did not believe her and pressed for more information. She said there had not been the time to walk from Kilcoy to Inverness, hand over the boy and walk back. She knew her niece was lying and on the Friday she applied all the pressure she could, but Bain put her head on the table and refused to say anything. Docherty suspected that Bain had abandoned or even drowned the infant and asked in a score of different ways. She continued to ask until the Saturday morning when Bain, worn down, told her another story.

  ‘I did it,’ she said, again and again. ‘I did it. My dear darling boy, I did do it.’ Bain confessed that she had drowned her son. She said she had gone into a wood beside the road and walked until she had found a lochan. She had ducked the toddler’s head into the water and then taken him out again. She wrapped the boy in her shawl and tried to bring him to life again but his face frightened her. She put him on the ground and kicked him on the head three times and put him back in the water.

  Docherty informed the police about what Bain had said and on Sunday, 1 February, Bain guided Constable Alexander Mackay to a small pool inside the wood. She showed him her dead son at the foot of a tree beside the pool and blamed it all on her mother.

  The case came to the circuit court in Inverness in May that year and the jury found Bain guilty of culpable homicide. Lord Kincairney sentenced her to seven years’ penal servitude.

  Witchcraft

  Much less common than the disposal of an unwanted child was an accusation of witchcraft, although it was not unknown in the nineteenth century. Although it was an intensely religious period, pockets of superstition still lingered in various places. In one case in the police court in Inverness in December 1883, Isabella Macrae, an elderly woman from Muirtown Street in Inverness, was charged with assaulting a young girl. Macrae said that the girl had verbally abused her and that her grandmother was a witch. Most of the court’s time was taken up with the names the child had called Macrae, but before Bailie Mackay gave his verdict the old lady produced a corp creagh. A corp creagh was a clay image shaped like a human and was used in witchcraft. This one was around four inches long and had the legs broken off. There were pins thrust through the place where the heart would be and green worsted threads tied around it. The spell, Macrae believed, was held within these threads. It is perhaps significant that green was the sacred colour of the Celts, used by fairies and possibly witches. Macrae believed that the image represented her, and since the legs had been broken off she was losing the strength in her own legs.

  As usual, there was quite a crowd of spectators in the court and they were highly amused as they listened to Macrae’s talk of witches and clay images. One man offered to buy the corp creagh but Macrae objected strongly. She claimed that if the image was damaged or broken she would die, so she had to care for it herself, as she was not yet ready to die.

  Macrae had recently lost her husband and three horses, and blamed the deaths of all four on witchcraft. Bailie Mackay listened to all the evidence, as well as Macrae’s beliefs, but preferred to stick with the initial charge and handed the old lady a choice of a fine or imprisonment. He did not mention the witchcraft.

  As in every other part of Scotland, Highland women were involved in different types of crime. They could be thieves, they could be fraudsters, but the most tragic crime was also the unhappy killing of their own children. It was not uncommon throughout the nineteenth century but every case carried its own tragedy.

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  A Mixed Bag of Crime

  The police were not only responsible for curbing the obvious crimes such as assaults, murders and theft. They also had to cope with a whole host of different offences. Some would be instantly recognisable to the officers who patrol the streets and roads today. For example, there was sexual crime, such as the case of Coll McDonell, who was found guilty of assault with intent at the circuit court at Inverness in May 1810. He had tried to rape young Janet McPherson, and Lord Armadale gave him three months for his misplaced lust.

  Other crimes were seen as more serious at the time.

  Blair the Forger

  In the early nineteenth century forging banknotes was regarded as a very serious crime. That was possibly because a skilled forger would find notes relatively easy to copy, and the authorities thought if they did not act firmly the country would be swamped with false money, which could ultimately damage the economy. In February 1814 a forgery case from Argyll came to the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh.

  Nathanial Blair was the man accused, although he usually travelled under the alias of Nathanial Sawers. On 15 October 1813 he had been at Kilmore Market in Argyll and had agreed to buy a horse
from a man named Duncan McGregor. They had arranged a price of £10, with five shillings discount, or ‘luck money’ as it was known, for a cash purchase. Both men met at the house of Kenneth Douglas, with a fourth man, Hugh McCorquadale, also present. Black counted out three £2 notes of the Bank of Scotland, four Falkirk Bank notes of small denominations, one British Linen Company note and two notes from other banks. The notes were counted out by candlelight at seven in the evening, with the light flickering across the faces of the men and the wind rattling the window behind them. Immediately when the deal was concluded Blair left the house and vanished into the dark of the October night.

  As soon as Blair was gone, McGregor handed over one of the British Linen Company twenty-shilling notes to McCorquadale as payment for a previous debt. The next morning, McCorquadale left the house and returned to his sister’s house in Oban. He gave her the banknote in return for change, and everybody seemed happy. His sister’s husband, Andrew McIntyre, a Writer in Glasgow, was taking his morning dram at the time and somebody came to the door. McIntyre saw the visitor and came back to McCorquadale, saying that the note was forged. They checked with McGregor and decided to have a word with Blair.

  Picking up a man named Colin McNab, McGregor and McIntyre tried to find Blair. They followed his trail to Portsonachan at Loch Awe, and saw him arrive with a few horses and a small girl. One of the horses was the one McGregor had sold him. Without any hesitation, McGregor and his companions grabbed hold of Blair and took him to the magistrates to be examined.

  Blair gave his own story. He said he was a horse dealer and when he was by Loch Lomond he sold a horse to a man he did not know and was given a bundle of notes. Shortly afterward he met the girl and they travelled together.

  The jury at the High Court did not think much of Blair’s story and found him guilty of forgery, so he was sentenced to be hanged in Edinburgh on 9 March 1814.

  The Science of Phrenology

  Fraudsters could penetrate to every corner of the nation. In January and February 1863 Shetland was graced by a Professor Duncan, who gave public lectures on the then popular science of phrenology. However, he was also collecting goods and clothing for himself from unsuspecting shopkeepers. When one reported him to the authorities, the learned professor appeared before the court at Fort Charlotte in Lerwick. Sheriff-Substitute Bell discovered that his real name was Duncan McLean and it was as his proper persona as a flesher from Arbroath that McLean was awarded forty days with hard labour.

  Impersonating Sir Charles

  In the nineteenth century railways made travel to the far corners of the country far easier. However, they also facilitated crime. In August 1881 Sir Charles Cuffe of Kilkenny House in Ireland arrived at the railway station at Thurso. He was not a happy man. He was visiting some of the landed gentry of Caithness but was hampered, as his luggage had been stolen. Sir Charles said he had been in Inverness and had boarded a train he thought was heading north, but inadvertently had climbed into a carriage bound for the west instead. He had left the train at Dingwall, but the goods van, with the bulk of his luggage on board, had continued onward to Thurso. When Sir Charles arrived the following day, his luggage was nowhere to be seen. As Sir Charles was obviously a gentleman and had such good relationships with the local gentry, nobody questioned his story and a search began for the luggage, without results.

  Sir Charles was a cheerful, good-natured man, small of stature and fluent in French and German. He looked as if he may have been an ex-army officer, as he carried himself well and spoke with authority. He was not shy, and befriended a number of people, including Sergeant Miller of the Thurso Police.

  The luggage theft was news for a while, but was forgotten after a few days. Interest was revived in October when Sir Charles reminded the world that his possessions had never been recovered. He had induced the local landowners to grant him hospitality for the past weeks, but unfortunately he was unable to pay as the Irish Land League had persuaded his tenants to withhold their rents, so he had no disposable income at present. However, things were not all black. His background and breeding was enough to make him friends, and one of the obliging gentlemen from Thurso drew up a letter of recommendation to an Edinburgh bank, allowing Sir Charles to draw cheques up to the value of £60, backed by the Royal Bank of Ireland.

  Unfortunately, the Royal Bank of Ireland refused to pay any money, saying Sir Charles’s note in their name was a forgery. An Edinburgh hotel found that Sir Charles had fooled them with a £15 cheque on the Bank of Ireland as well. The police began a thorough investigation of Sir Charles Cuffe and discovered many interesting things. They discovered that his friendship with the gentleman from Caithness was not at all longstanding; in fact, it had only begun a few weeks ago when the supposed Sir Charles met the gentleman on the P & O steamer Australia, on passage from Malta to Great Britain.

  The police delved a little more and found out that the real Sir Charles Cuffe was actually on the Continent, seriously ill. The imposter was in great demand, particularly by the law, who wanted him to answer questions on fraud, forgery, falsehood and wilful imposition. However, the imposter was never caught.

  This inscription is on the wall of the prison in Fort George

  © Author’s Collection

  Superstition

  In late 1871 superstition was still prevalent among some of the inhabitants of Lewis. That year a crofter only sixteen miles from Stornoway, the largest town of the Hebrides, accused his neighbour and his wife of witchcraft. He said they were thieves, as they had used the black arts to steal the substance out of his cow’s milk. Sheriff Mackenzie and the audience of the court were vastly amused and fined the man five shillings.

  An Embezzling Bank Clerk

  As well as crimes peculiar to the rural areas and the sea, the Highlands had its share of ordinary white-collar crime, including embezzlement. One instance that attracted some interest at the time was centred on Norman Macdonald, a bank agent from Redbank, near Creagorry in Benbecula, who was accused of breach of trust and embezzlement in September 1883.

  Macdonald was the bank agent at Creagorry and also the clerk and treasurer for the school board of South Uist. It was a position of trust, as it involved dealing with money in an organisation that incorporated the prospects of every child on the island. Macdonald held the position from May 1875 and it seemed he was steadily draining the funds from the board into his own wallet. This was only a few years after the Education Act had made it compulsory for every child to have at least a modicum of learning. Between May 1873 and April 1883 Macdonald embezzled £1,530, nine shillings and sixpence from the board. Not only that, but he was also the Inspector of the Poor for the parish of South Uist and embezzled £348 intended for the poor, and kept it for himself.

  Macdonald pleaded guilty but had a defence that there was no malicious intention, he was only a slovenly accountant. He claimed he merely confused money that was due to him and money that was due to the various funds he was responsible for. All the money he embezzled was replaced by Macdonald or by his friends. All the same, he was sent to penal servitude for five years.

  Reckless Driving

  Although the advent of the internal combustion engine undoubtedly made Scottish roads more dangerous, there were occasions when horse-drawn vehicles could also be fatal. Such a case occurred on Sunday, 12 March 1820, when James Jordan drove the North Mail Coach between Port Gower and Berridale.

  Mail coaches were much like the later postbus in that they carried passengers as well as letters and parcels, so the driver was in a very responsible position with the Royal Mail and people’s safety under his care. As well as the four passengers who sat inside the coach and shuffled their feet in the straw on the floor, there were others who balanced on the roof outside; they paid less for the privilege of enjoying the bracing Scottish weather and views.

  Jordan was probably a good driver when he was sober, but unfortunately he liked his drink too much. He had been drinking that day, so when he approached th
e Bridge of Langwell at some speed, his passengers were alarmed. They had cause to be. Jordan’s speech was slurred, he was driving far too fast for the darkness of the night, and to make matters worse, only one of the coach’s two lights were working so the driver and passengers could hardly see the edges of the road. When Jordan negotiated the sharp turn that led onto the bridge he lost control of his horses, the coach swayed, tipped and overturned, with its entire body coming apart from the wheels. The outside passengers were tumbled off; some were thrown over the parapet of the bridge into the water below, and one unfortunate man named James Sutherland was killed.

  The passengers were not quite sure what had happened. Some thought that Jordan had clattered the coach against the parapet, others said the road had huge ruts that toppled the coach, but everybody had felt a sudden jerk a moment before the accident. However, it was not until the coach was inspected after the accident that people realised just how badly it had been maintained. The mortices were decayed and the woodwork of the body was rotted through. It was an accident waiting for the right time to strike.

  When the case reached the circuit court in Inverness in May 1820, the jury needed very little time in finding Jordan not guilty of culpable homicide.