Classic Scottish Murder Stories

by Molly Whittington-Egan

  Meanwhile, James Banks, a plasterer, who lived in Cheyne Street, had become suspicious on hearing of the discovery of a dead baby only 20 yards from his home. That June, he had let a room to a couple calling themselves Mr and Mrs Macpherson. They were allotted a coal-closet, which they kept locked. In September, Mrs Macpherson had driven up in a cab, one day, with a baby. Isabella Banks, the plasterer’s daughter, had held it while Mrs Macpherson paid the cabman. She asked whose baby it was. It was a little girl, the lodger replied, and its mother would soon come for it. Then she threw it up in her arms in a fine gesture of benevolence and said, ‘My bonnie wee bairn!’ That bairn was never seen alive again.

  She told Mr Banks that she had got a child, and £25 to keep it, and had parted with it to a certain person for £18, leaving £7 for herself. We can be sure that, in the climate of the times, Banks would not have been surprised by the transaction, but rather by the speed of the transfer. Mrs Banks had been away from home during the month of September, and on her return, the family told her about the disappearing child. She asked Mrs Macpherson point-blank what had become of it and she said that she had put it away, and if a servant-girl came asking for her, she was to send her off, saying that she was in church.

  Mrs Macpherson herself was pregnant, with the birth imminent. Mrs Banks noticed that there was a baby’s hat on the bed, and asked why she had bought it in advance – which speaks volumes for the poor circumstances of these people, and the qualified expectation of a live, healthy birth. The story was that it was her niece’s hat. She went away to have her baby and returned in due course without it. Once Mrs Banks asked her for the key of the coal-closet, and she refused, saying that she had dirty clothing in there. The Macphersons used a special chap (knock) when they let each other into the house.

  James Banks, reflecting on these uncertain matters, decided to go to the police. Detective Clark, of Edinburgh City Police, heard his story and was very interested, although the little girl who had vanished was obviously not the boy found in the street. A very young female infant had been reported missing. Mrs Tomlinson, wife of Samuel Tomlinson, of 6 Wardrop’s Court, Lawnmarket, had told the police that her daughter, Alice Tomlinson, a domestic servant, had given birth on August 11th to an illegitimate baby, Violet Duncan Tomlinson, in the Edinburgh Maternity Hospital. Alice was in no position to care for an infant. She, the mother, had taken Violet in, but only temporarily, while advertising for someone to adopt her.

  Among a number of applicants, a Mrs Burns, of Cheyne Street, had submitted the lowest tender. She had said that she wanted the baby for her sister, Mrs Macpherson, who was married to the Duke of Montrose’s piper, and would take the child to live in splendid country surroundings on the Duke’s estate. This colourful fabrication was a clinching enticement, and Mrs Tomlinson had parted with Violet, aged one month, paying over a premium of £2 to Mrs Burns when she came to collect her. Since then, Mrs Tomlinson had gone several times to the house in Cheyne Street to see how her granddaughter was getting on, but had always been turned away and had begun to harbour doubts. Her daughter, Alice, had become ill, and was admitted to the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.

  Inspector Clark proceeded to Cheyne Street and cornered Mrs Macpherson alias Mrs Burns. He asked her what had become of Violet Tomlinson. She produced a pair of baby’s shoes and a vaccination certificate (immunisation against smallpox being then compulsory) and stated that she was with her sister, who was married to the Duke of Montrose’s piper. Unimpressed, the inspector searched the house and actually found the key of the coal-closet. The woman went to pieces, and begged him not to open the door. As he went forward to use the key, according to his supporting colleague, David Simpson, detective officer, she cried out, ‘Get a cab! Take me to the police station. It is there. I did it!’

  The door was unlocked and revealed a chamber of horrors. The corpse of a baby girl, wrapped in a canvas cloth, was lying on the bottom shelf. This was, in fact, Violet Tomlinson. On the top shelf, there was a stain corresponding to the shape of a child’s body, together with some pieces of cloth sffiufar to that encasing the parcelled body found outside, and a canister which had contained chloride of lime. Contrary to still-held popular belief, lime does not aid decomposition, but rather retards it, and soft tissues are largely preserved. If water is added, to slake quicklime, some mummification will occur. Here, chlorinated lime was probably used for its disinfectant properties, to lessen smell. On this shelf, the body of Alexander Gunn had lain before being used as a football. He was one of twins, and his brief history will be told a little later.

  A quantity of children’s clothing was also found in the house and the police officers were by now quite sure in their own minds that they had found the lair of a typical baby-farmer. The vile trade in unwanted babies, most often illegitimate, at a time when small value was placed on infant life, was not in itself illegal. The practice was called ‘adoption’ but it was really fostering, and there was no legal force to the transaction. Generally, it was the activity of very impoverished people. Desperate mothers, or their agents, handed over their children to slatterns who cared for them with such negligence and omissions that death often supervened, or, as the money that came with them ran out, resorted to deliberate murder. The baby-farmers did not ‘buy’ the children: it was the other way round. A child on weekly terms stood a better chance of survival than a baby taken with a lump sum. The deprivation of mother’s milk and inadequate feeding with slops was often sufficient to ease the parting. If large numbers were taken in, the health problems multiplied.

  Sometimes the babies passed down a chain of these ‘carers’ for lesser and lesser funds, the procedure known as ‘baby-sweating’. The babies were lost, had no identity, and the last thing that the baby-farmers wanted was a parent trying to stay in touch with them, or the babies. They kept on the move, changed addresses, used aliases, and were proficient liars.

  The spread of the railway system aided the transfer of babies in secrecy, under the station clock, before they were borne off, wrapped in their clean shawls, to a short and horrible future. Sedatives were used indiscriminately – laudanum was freely available – and weak and puny babies were stupefied with alcohol.

  The problem was just as widespread in Scotland as in England. In 1870, the Glasgow-based North British Daily Mail ran its own enquiry into ‘Baby-Farming in Scotland’ and found many gross cruelties. As a result of an undercover approach, a terrible establishment was disclosed at a respectable-looking house near Arthur’s Seat. There were whippings and mysterious disappearances. The colonies, such as New Zealand, where respectability ruled, were not immune. As social conditions improved, and legislation whittled away at the abuses, gradually there were alternatives to baby-farming. The NSPCC was founded in 1889. In blatant cases of outright murder, the police acted. By the time of the Cheyne Street discovery, there was beginning to be less tolerance by the public and the police. The last baby-farmer to be hanged in Britain was Leslie James, alias Rhoda Willis, in 1907.

  Who knows how many adoptions this Mrs Macpherson had already conducted? She was probably in mid-career. Apprehended murdering baby-farmers showed a pattern of previous killings not admitted to, which might come to light years later. Further enquiries established that her real name was Jessie King. She was a wretched, undernourished creature, aged 27, yet with some vestige of that prerequisite of the successful baby-farmer – a respectable mien. She was a Roman Catholic. As so often there was a male partner or hanger-on. She was, of necessity, the front woman but behind her there lurked the suspicious figure of Thomas Pearson, alias Macpherson, her ancient lover of unprepossessing aspect, burly like a bear with a muddy grey-bearded face and a monstrous wen nestling in his bald pate. He called himself a labourer.

  The police traced Jessie King’s movements back oriWyear to October, 1887, when she was living with Thomas Pearson at 24 Dalkeith Road. Pearson was the name on their door in the tenement and the noticeably older man was supposed to be her uncle. Sometimes
the couple were known to be the worse for drink, and there were sounds of quarrelling. There came David Ferguson Finlay, of 16 Lindsay Place, Leith, that stock Victorian character, a seducer. He had impregnated a girl named Elizabeth Campbell and she had taken refuge at the home of her sister and brother-in-law, John Anderson, at High Street, Prestonpans, where, on May 20th, 1887, she had given birth to a boy – Walter Anderson Campbell. She herself had died one week later.

  Her sister, Janet, left with the baby, told David Finlay that she would be willing to adopt Walter if he would pay ‘aliment’, but this would have been a continuing drain on his precious resources, and he preferred to make his own plans. Adoption advertisements, inserted by either party, i.e. by those offering a child or those seeking one, were carried even by high-class newspapers well into the 20th century. Finlay advertised his love-child on the open market, and Jessie King and Thomas Pearson, operating under the name of Stewart, with Pearson posing as Jessie’s father, were chosen, Finlay contracting to pay the lump sum of £5 for Walter’s continuing maintenance. He did visit and inspect the room at 24 Dalkeith Road, but then he considered his duty well done and made no further enquiries. He wrote a brief note to Janet Anderson at Prestonpans – ‘a party will call for the child tomorrow forenoon’. That is how it was done. It was not, as we have said, illegal, but it was clandestine and it was shameful.

  On August 20th, the oleaginous father and daughter called with their note of authorisation. The man conducted the arrangements and the woman had a tale to spin: she was a poor widow, and her baby of the same age as Walter had passed away and she had been depressed ever since. Off they went with the two-month-old baby, in perfect health, together with its birth certificate and vaccination paper, which was solemnly returned by post, filled up, and handed to the registrar by Janet Anderson. The pair had declined to give Janet their address but there was nothing she could do about that, except, presumably, ask David Finlay. At 24 Dalkeith Road, neighbours were aware that the Pearsons had a child about the place, but after three months it was no longer there – sent away to its aunt, as the explanation went – and Walter Campbell was never seen again, alive or dead.

  The loving adopters moved on, and by March, 1888, were installed in a house in Ann’s Court, Canonmills. Their next target was, typically, a domestic servant, Catherine Gunn. On May 1st, 1887, at 54 Bristo Street, she had been delivered of the unwelcome gift of twin sons, who were illegitimate. After four days, they had been put with a Mrs Henderson, of 17 Rose Street, who had looked after them very well, for weekly payment, but Catherine could not go on like that forever. There was not even a David Finlay in evidence. She had had to work again, or starve. Small wonder that quite a number of live-born babies were passed off as stillborn. There were a few philanthropic institutions which took in babies, but there were not enough places to go round. ‘Adoption’ was the only solution for mothers like Catherine.

  Nearly a year had passed, and, defeated, she had asked Mrs Euphemia Mackay, a monthly nurse or unqualified midwife, who had attended her in her confinement, to insert one of the infamous advertisements, seeking a permanent adopter. There was always a chance that a genuine home might be found. There were 29 replies, which indicated that the trade in babies was still thriving. Most of those replies, it appears, will have contained false claims of the ideal conditions awaiting a dear little baby.

  You would have thought that the twins could have gone as a pair, but Robert probably did better than Alexander, because Jessie King got him, on April 5th with the princely sum of £2. He was small, but ‘strong to be a twin’ and in normal health. The intermediary nurse called twice at Ann’s Court, and was satisfied with Alexander’s progress. Mr and Mrs Macpherson, as the kindly couple styled themselves, seemed very fond of the child, and called him Sandy. A little girl, Janet Burnie, of 6 Front Baker’s Land, Canonmills, was paid a pittance to care for Sandy for long hours – from 10am to 6pm. She did nothing wrong. On one occasion, Mrs Elizabeth Mackenzie, Jessie King’s landlady, objected when she saw Jessie ‘pouring whisky over the baby’s throat’. Sandy’s mother, relieved of her burden, got married, and lived happily at 6 Huntly Street, Canonmills.

  In May, 1888, Sandy was suddenly no longer there. Jessie said that his mother had died in the Royal Infirmary, and another woman had taken him. However, she also told Janet Burnie that his father had come during the night and taken him away. The little girl then went to ‘Mr Macpherson’ for an explanation, and was told that the child was away across the water, for the good of his health. This was the baby found in Cheyne Street with an apron string tied round its neck, after Jessie moved there in June.

  Since there was strong suspicion of three child murders, Jessie King and Thomas Pearson were arrested, but Jessie entirely exonerated her paramour in her judicial declaration and he was released to bear witness for the Crown against her. He was immune from prosecution, although his shared guilt was obvious. Jessie King alone was put to her capital trial at the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh on February 18th, 1889, charged with murdering Walter Campbell, aged five months, Alexander Gunn, 12 months, and Violet Tomlinson, six weeks.

  Thomas Pearson gave his perfidious evidence under the staring gaze of Jessie King in the dock. He knew nothing about any killings, he said. The sums got with the children were all spent properly on the household expenses. He admitted that he had gone under three names: Pearson, Stewart and Macpherson. He had used the latter ever since he was a boy. He had found it an appropriate name when he was attending the Highland gatherings. His name could be seen in the Scotsman in 1857, as the winner of a first-class prize. He certainly did help to adopt Walter Campbell from Prestonpans, because Jessie wanted a child. After three weeks, it was missing, and Jessie said that she had grown tired of it and taken it to Miss Stirling’s Home: ‘he would see the boy running about the Causeway with a blue gown on.’

  Evidence was brought that there was a home so named in Stockbridge, not Causewayside, and that Walter Anderson Campbell was not on the registers. He had simply vanished. The police and Dr Littlejohn had twice searched the premises at 24 Dalkeith Road and were satisfied that the body was not there, after taking up the flooring of two houses and examining the coal cellars of both. In fact, the Crown was soon to withdraw the charge relating to this child. Cunningly, Jessie King had refused throughout to say anything at all about him.

  As for the twin, Alexander Gunn, or Sandy, Jessie had kept him for three weeks and he remembered coming home one night and finding him gone. Jessie said that she had taken him to Miss Stirling’s. He had wanted to visit Sandy there, but Jessie said that male visitors were not admitted. He had no knowledge of Jessie’s bringing a baby girl (Violet Tomlinson) to Cheyne Street, nor did he know whether or not the coal-closet in the passage was kept locked. His oilskin coat had disappeared and Jessie had said that she had thrown it out because it was covered in green mould. He thought that was a pity.

  Jessie King’s declaration, read out, caused horror in court. It contained graphic admissions and also classic baby-farmers’ lies and evasions. She did try to get the twin, Sandy, into Miss Stirling’s Home, and others, but all refused because he was illegitimate. Thomas Pearson loved the little boy so, but they were poor people and could not afford to keep it. One Monday after she had unsuccessfully tried to place the child, she had drunk too much and lied to Pearson that she was off to Miss Stirling’s. He went out and while he was away, she strangled the boy and put him in a cupboard. When they moved to Cheyne Street, she took the body with her, in a box and then hid it in the coal-closet. Later, she put the body outside.

  As for Violet Tomlinson, the adoption was all her own work and Pearson had nothing to do with it. She brought the baby home while he was away at his work, and gave it some whisky to keep it quiet. The spirits were stronger than she had thought and took the baby’s breath away. While it lay gasping, she put her hand on its mouth and choked it. When it was dead, she put the body in the closet where it lay until the police fou
nd it. She had tied a cloth over its mouth in case it came alive while she was out, and made a noise. (Her account was not in accordance with the post-mortem findings of Dr Henry Littlejohn and Dr Joseph Bell, who, while noting that the lower part of the face was, indeed, tightly enveloped in a piece of cotton cloth, twisted at the back of the head and knotted at the throat, found that the actual cause of death was strangulation by a ligature round the neck. Such was a favoured method of the baby-farmers: Mrs Amelia Elizabeth Dyer boasted, ‘You’ll know mine by the tape around their necks.’)

  There was a view, which took little cognizance of the human suffering involved, that the mothers of children offered for adoption connived at their eventual demise. If that were so, the money scraped together at what cost to go with the child must have represented a conscience-salving device! Closing for the defence, Counsel tried this approach, suggesting that the parents were not without their share of moral responsibility. However, the grief of Sandy’s mother in the witness box as she identified a pair of baby’s shoes was well remarked and it was remembered that she had paid weekly terms for the twins to be properly cared for until they were nearly one year old.

  Was it not possible, Counsel suggested, as he had to, that Jessie King had been under the influence and control of Thomas Pearson throughout and was acting as much for his advantage as her own? He asked for a verdict of culpable homicide, but he did not prevail, because the case was beyond mercy. Baby-farmers, like serial killers, were not prone to remorse. They were too hardened, being, if we must define, mass killers for gain. Once they were caged, however, the tears flowed – for themselves. Mrs Dyer tried to throttle herself with her bootlaces, and Jessie King attempted strangulation in the condemned cell, with strips torn from her skirt. On March 11th, 1889, Jessie King became the last woman to be hanged in Edinburgh. The fate of her own baby, one of the lost children of the Victorian underworld, passed from hand to hand, or worse, was never revealed.