by David Leslie
In addition to the religious differences, Glasgow has long been a dangerous if not deadly meeting place for gangs whose membership is solely territorially based. There was an unwritten law that any member of an opposing gang caught within the boundaries of another would be allowed to continue unmolested if he was accompanied by a woman, in particular a girlfriend or wife. In such a case, the razors would be slipped back into pockets, still shining, at least for the time being. But when members of opposing factions – be it with tribal or religious differences, steaming with booze, filled with an energy that had to be dissipated and indifferent to the consequences – challenged for the affections of a woman, be she young or mature but certainly making her availability evident, then trouble was almost inevitable.
At weekends, the Barrowland would be the scene of special afternoon or matinee dances laid on for those considered too young to join the adult goings-on at night. Known locally as ‘unders’, these get-togethers would be finished by early evening, but that did not necessarily signal the end of the entertainment, as one unders regular remembers. ‘If things seemed a bit on the tame side, we’d wind up a few of the boys by making promises to two or three that they could have a feel outside. That used to start off some real ding-dongs, and we’d walk off leaving them to it.
‘At nights, my grandma and I would take a walk down to the Gallowgate and stand outside the Barrowland just to watch the men fighting. There were some really good shows, and all for free: blood everywhere, people being kicked or slashed, and then winners and losers trying to get back inside with their clothes ripped and stained. Loads of people went to watch the fights and occasionally a couple of the women would get stuck in, the men making a circle around them and egging them to rip each other’s clothes off.
‘It was good fun and very often you’d go back first thing next morning to look for pieces of jewellery that had been torn off or money that had fallen out of the men’s pockets. Sometimes the fighters themselves would come looking for bits and pieces they had lost. They’d have swollen noses, ears half hanging off, cut and slashed faces, still half drunk and maybe even have the girl they’d been fighting over with them.’
Then, on average once a month, would come what was looked on as a replay of the ancient battles against the Auld Enemy. In this modern version, the combatants were Hell’s Angels and, initially at least in the scraps, Teddy Boys, young men in tight trousers, long coats, greased hair and crêpe-soled shoes known in the business as beetle crushers. The bikers would head north from England – Newcastle, Carlisle, even Manchester – their numbers increasing along the way. Having reached Glasgow, they would make for the Kingsley Café at the junction of London Road and Monteith Place. A one-time waitress remembers that despite their frightening appearance, they were ‘courteous and polite’, adding, ‘Everybody knew they had come to hang around outside the Barrowland intent on fighting. In the café, their language could be a mixture of, to a Glaswegian, the unintelligible and four-letter words. But as soon as one of the girls approached them, or a woman sat nearby, the filthy language would stop, which was more than you could say of the locals. A stranger walking into the café would be able to tell the Scots from the English – the Scots were the ones who carried on effing and blinding, as if swearing was an accepted part of the lingo.
‘The Hell’s Angels knew they had no chance of getting into the Barrowland, or any other dance hall – men needed a shirt and tie for that, and officially anyone who had been drinking was not supposed to get inside, although the reality was a fair proportion of the dancers were merry from booze – so the bikers hung around until the Teds turned up and then they would be at it, hammer and tongs.
‘When knives and razors came out, someone would call the police and one or two would go off to hospital and a few more to the cells. There were some really hard guys among the Hell’s Angels, but it was astonishing how they would mostly be meek as lambs in front of women. There would always be the odd exception, and maybe one or two did get carried away as the day wore on, try it on with some girl or other and perhaps not want to take “No” for an answer.’
Vicious though the fighting might sometimes have been, it was generally agreed that this ought to be the limit of the unauthorised violence. The Barrowland was notorious for being the scene of punch-ups; however, these were dances, not wars, and while women did now and then become embroiled, they were the exceptions. Girls like Hannah and women, young and old, expected to be able to enjoy a night out there and arrive home, if not totally unmolested, at least safely.
Like most other parents, had Malcolm and Jessie suspected there was any likelihood that the safety and sanctity of their daughters was being threatened, there would have been an instant ban on them going back to the dance hall. But the Martins did feel secure. Even when, now and then, Hannah missed the last bus home, she need only have made the short walk to nearby Bridgeton, where a relative would give her a bed for the night and send her home after breakfast the following morning.
If other parents occasionally gave their girls a gentle reminder to ‘watch yourself’, none appear to have been issued in Hannah’s direction. Maybe the Martins, like so many other parents, took the view that tragedy happened to others, not the likes of them. It was an outlook that would lead to so much heartache in the years that lay ahead.
The Barrowland saw them all: the good, the bad, the beautiful and the nondescript. But mostly the nondescript. No one, for example, could say that Hannah Martin was other than ordinary. There was nothing about her screaming out that she had it in her to become extraordinary, but she surely did. That applied, too, to a young man named John Irvine McInnes from Stonehouse, Lanarkshire, a former Scots Guard who had left the army to become a furniture salesman. John had his good and bad points, but an occasional trip to the Barrowland was no crime. Much later it would not seem that way.
There was Helen Puttock, a twenty-nine-year-old mother of two from Scotstoun, who would sometimes take a taxi ride for a night’s dancing. How many hundreds of others did the same? Did Helen stand out from the crowd? She would.
And then there was a tall, auburn-haired stranger who called himself John and had an odd habit of sometimes coming out with quotations from the Holy Bible.
TWO
THE STRANGER
Early in 1966, Hannah set off for the Barrowland, assuring her parents there was no need for them to worry if she did not return home that night. She intended to stay with Jessie’s relatives on Landressy Street in Bridgeton, a few minutes’ walk from the dance hall, and would catch a bus back sometime the next morning. She looked older than her 16 years and could easily have passed for 20, with a ripening body and auburn hair that men found desirable, but out of bounds – although she was not averse to a kiss and cuddle, provided it was on the understanding it went no further. She could not have known it, but this was to be an evening that might have changed so many lives.
Towards the end of the night’s fun, a stranger pushed his way through couples milling around the crowded floor and asked for the last dance. Hannah nodded and, minutes afterwards, as the applause for the musicians was dying out, her partner asked if he could see her home. She told him of her destination, half-fearing he would announce that he was heading in the opposite direction, and to her pleasure he indicated Bridgeton was on his route.
Jostling with other couples making their way down the wide staircase and heading through double doors thrown wide open to encourage the swift exit of the night’s detritus – as this was how the doormen saw their customers – Hannah and her escort met up outside and turned left, took another left onto Kent Street and a left yet again onto Moncur Street, along the rear of the Barrowland. The streets were dark and murky, leading through blocks of apartments and shops that are now mostly gone. Couples smooched in dark doorways, and Hannah could hear the rustle of clothing and an occasional giggle. They walked slowly through an area known locally as The Dwellings, where they lingered to kiss and cuddle, before entering what
was the appropriately named Risk Street. From there, it was a few more minutes’ stroll to London Road and then onto Landressy Street.
She felt happy and confident as they set off, humming some of the night’s dance-hall tunes, skipping and flirting. They stopped several times to kiss but, after a few minutes, Hannah sensed a coolness developing in the stranger: his kisses were becoming less firm, she was holding onto him rather than he taking the initiative. She had expected to feel his hands make their way under her coat and was surprised, even a little disappointed, at his apparent lack of exploration. He had become quiet, sullen even, and began falling behind her as they walked. At first, there had been others walking in the same direction, presumably heading home too, but gradually they had turned off, vanishing into the shadows, until only Hannah and the stranger remained on the streets.
When he lagged, she urged him to catch up, turning around and exhorting him, ‘Come on, keep up, keep up!’ She was already ambling slowly rather than strolling, so made no effort to stop. ‘Keep up,’ she urged again. ‘Keep up!’
Then she heard him recite what sounded like a Bible quotation. He was a few yards behind at this stage and she had difficulty hearing. ‘What was that?’ Hannah asked, half-turning, not really aware of what had been said. She was met with silence and wondered if her companion might be slowing in the hope she would walk so far ahead that he would be able to slip away and leave her to find her own way to Landressy Street.
It was, she felt, a bizarre performance on the part of a man who had asked if he might see her home. Journey’s end, her aunt’s home, was now only a couple of minutes off and, once reached, any chance of romance would surely cease. Time was short.
Looking back with the aid of hindsight, and all that was to follow in the coming years, it is easy to wonder why Hannah did not take to her heels. But there was no reason to do so. Though she thought she had heard words more suited to a pulpit, there was nothing especially unusual or alarming about a stranger talking rubbish. She was simply a young woman making her way home through residential streets with an escort who was apparently acting the fool.
‘Keep up,’ she told him once more and was a little relieved to hear his footsteps approaching. A trace of anticipation may even have crossed her lips at the thought of him obeying her instruction. But she did not turn around.
And then lightning shot before her eyes a millisecond after a blow to the back of her head. Her knees buckled. Someone less streetwise than Hannah might have stopped and asked what was happening, and would almost certainly not have been given an answer to their very last question on this earth. Maybe it was instinct, a determination for survival, or possibly just fear, but she kept going, desperately fighting against the urge to collapse, knowing that to look around would cost a vital fraction of a second that could be the difference between living and dying. She felt shocked and faint; she thought she was going to be sick and was oddly curious as to what was going on.
The pain in her head was agonising but, from somewhere, she found the strength to begin shouting for help, a plea that went unanswered. She was strangely unaware of the whereabouts of her attacker, who appeared to have fled at the first shouts.
Soon, she was at the door that promised safety and sanctuary. Her cousins, infuriated by what she had told them, went angrily rushing off in the direction from which she had come, hoping to exact revenge on her attacker, but they returned half an hour later, breathless, admitting they had been unable to find him. What had happened in those dreadful few minutes would always haunt Hannah because her life might easily have ended there and then. Yet it would be many years before she would confide to a close friend the events of that night: ‘I couldn’t even be sure what the man looked like because it was as if the blow had made a mess of my memory, confused my thinking,’ Hannah remembered. ‘It was all over so quickly and I wasn’t really hurt, just shaken.
‘It was no use going to the police because, what could I tell them? In any case, people around Bridgeton had little faith in them. They would hardly go to much trouble over a teenage girl who said she’d been hit by a man she couldn’t identify. And so I told my aunt not to tell my parents because had they found out they would have stopped me going to the dancing, certainly barred me unless I had someone else to go with. There was no way I wanted that to happen. I loved the dancing, made a lot of friends there. It was the only thing I had to look forward to.
‘Why the guy had picked on me was something I did not understand at the time, and would never know. But, in the light of what happened later, I became more and more certain that the attacker was the man who would be known as Bible John. Maybe I should have gone to the police then, or even later. But I didn’t and, in any case, what were the chances of catching him? All I knew was that I could have been dead.’
So, in the space of a few minutes, the incident began and ended. What happened, of course, begged the question whether Hannah Martin would go dancing to the Glasgow halls again. But she made it plain she would not be deterred.
Hannah had that remarkable property, some might say gift, that is bestowed on the young: the ability to throw scorn at adversity. This might have been just enough to overcome any doubts or fears about what might happen in the future. Naturally, she would be more careful, at least for a while, until the shock of the attack eased. Lightning, it is said, never strikes twice. Hannah was about to find the old adage wide of the mark.
THREE
IN THE BEGINNING
In February 1967, the year following the attack, 17-year-old Pat McAdam, the same age as Hannah, had journeyed to the Glasgow dance halls with a girlfriend from her home in Dumfries, almost 90 miles off. As Pat and her friend thumbed a lift south from Glasgow, a lorry driver named Thomas Ross Young stopped and offered to take them home. Although her friend was safely dropped off, Pat was never seen again. Police interviewed Young but, while he admitted having had sex with the teenager in the cab of his lorry, despite being more than twice her age, he claimed to have left her safely on the outskirts of Dumfries. His explanation appeared to have been accepted because no charges followed then but, much later, the authorities would take a very different view.
There were some Barrowland regulars, perhaps including Hannah, who would have been in the same dance hall as the teenagers that night and while the mystery of Pat’s fate merited gossip, few, if any, seemed to have learned the lesson that the Grim Reaper could call on anyone, at any moment, anywhere. Indeed, by the following year, few remembered Pat. But then why should they have? She had been just one more dancer among so many other seemingly ordinary young people. Life was too short to spend it worrying about the fate of a stranger. Yet all were about to be affected in some way by a series of events that would ensnare so many into a web of horror.
In Bellshill, Hannah was growing into womanhood. Perhaps she would never see herself as attractive, yet she had about her a look of pretty innocence that young men found desirable. She was frequently receiving offers of a walk home as the Barrowland bands began their nightly last waltz. On occasions, she accepted but sometimes found herself arriving at Landressy Street on her own, her escort having decided to withdraw his offer after she made it plain she was ‘not that sort of girl’ and was saving herself for marriage.
There were occasions when she wondered what would happen if Mr Right never came along. Would she miss out? It was an uncertainty caused by the natural impetuosity of youth. In the heart of this 17 year old going on 27, she knew she was doing the right thing, although after the attack by the holy man who failed to prophecy his murderous intentions she had stayed away from the Barrowland for some time.
Early in 1968, a chill crept down the spines of Glasgow’s dancing public and it was not one brought on by the cold of a dying winter. A murder – foul, gruesome and disgusting – dominated conversations everywhere but especially in venues such as the Barrowland and the Majestic. It was a killing that had a special significance because the victim was one of their own. And while no o
ne could have known it then, this would be a slaying that would have consequences around the world. To this day, it remains a cloud of shame that hangs over Glasgow, the Green Place.
Patricia Docker was vivacious, a smile rarely far from her lips. She was a woman who devoted herself to caring for others. Her looks and hazel eyes turned the heads of most men, but she saved her love for the joy of her life, her four-year-old son. As a nursing auxiliary at the Victoria Infirmary, not far from the home she shared with the boy in Langside Place, Patricia was accustomed to coping with the grief that inevitably comes from loss. By February 1968, she had to cope with distress of her own, as she was forced to live apart from her husband, a soldier whose duties meant he was stationed at that time in England. It was a situation that placed strains on both but, in the hope of taking her mind off personal worries, her friends had persuaded her to join them at the Majestic for the weekly Thursday night over-25s dance.
She was reluctant to leave her son but, when her parents offered to babysit, Patricia donned a grey coat over her favourite light-tan dress and set off. At the Majestic, there was no shortage of partners eager to hold and be held by the pretty, dark-haired 25 year old. Most might have been content with the Majestic, but for some reason that night Patricia craved a change of scene. No one could remember when or why but, as the evening passed, Patricia gathered her brown handbag and left, heading for the Barrowland Ballroom, where Hannah Martin, long recovered from her encounter with a Bible-quoting nutcase, was among the hundreds having fun.
Dance floors the world over hold a potpourri of humanity eager to impress and the Barrowland was no different. Patricia and Hannah, complete strangers to each other – one an experienced woman, the other still maturing – were surrounded by men anxious to make an impression and not especially concerned about how they did it. All had their own stories. There were bus conductors claiming to be missionaries from Africa, labourers spinning yarns about being movie extras, visiting sales representatives passing themselves off as rich English footballers and civil servants with a neat line of patter from some medical directory they recalled reading somewhere. Other young men tried to sell themselves in manifestly fake accents with tales of being servicemen from Ohio, oilmen from Texas, millionaires, spies, preachers, company directors, ships’ captains and members of leading bands. Some of the more astute were already giving false names, knowing how useful this would be should the night end in a sexual encounter resulting in pregnancy.