Halifax and Scotland were not alone in having beheading machines. Germany and Italy both had their own such devices, as did France, even before Dr Joseph Guillotin came up with his famous design to strike off a man's head ‘in the twinkling of the eye, and you never feel it.’
The Scottish machine swiftly became known as ‘The Maiden’ although exactly why is not known. Some say it was because the word for ‘place of execution’ in Gaelic was Mod-dun, which is as good a theory as any. A replica stands in Edinburgh's Museum of Scotland – a 10-foot-high wooden structure with a 5-foot-wide beam at its foot and another long diagonal beam supporting it. The iron blade is just over 10 ins long and topped with lead weights because the weight of the blade itself is not enough to slice through a neck successfully. The grooves on the facing edges of the uprights were kept well greased to allow the smooth downward passage of the blade.
The beauty of The Maiden was that anyone could use it. Pull the pin and down the blade went. Theoretically, there was no need for a special executioner to turn up with his double-handed sword. Labourers had to be paid to transport the device to the place of execution, for the Scottish version was a portable affair, but then labourers had to be paid to construct a gibbet. A blacksmith also had to be paid to sharpen the blade but that was a small price to pay for such an efficient means of dispatching malefactors.
In 1600, The Maiden was the instrument of death for a young woman of barely twenty, convicted of having her husband murdered. Her family wanted her execution to be performed as quietly as possible but the people were not to be deprived of their spectacle. Meanwhile, her co-accused, two women without the benefit of being high born, were put through the hell of strangling and burning.
3
DEATH AND THE MAIDEN
Lady Jean Warriston and Janet Murdo, 1600
Exactly when Lady Jean Livingston of Dunipace married John Kincaid, Laird of Warriston, is unclear. She was born in 1579, the daughter of a wealthy and influential Stirlingshire family, and died in 1600, so they could not have been wed too long before Kincaid met his brutal end. A popular ballad about the affair had it that they had been married ‘these nine years running ten’, which does seem unlikely. Another version says she married him at fifteen. Yet another says that the match was made not in heaven but in profit; in other words, she married the considerably older Laird of Warriston for money. However, soon after the wedding, she gave birth to a young son. Whether it was her husband's child is open to some question, however, given her curious relationship with one of her father's servants.
Whatever the case, matrimonial bliss definitely eluded the beautiful young woman. Again the reason for this is shrouded in some mystery. The balladeers insist her husband was an uncaring brute who regularly dished out beatings. According to a later indictment (not against her but a male co-accused), she developed ‘ane deadly rancour’ against her husband for ‘the alleged biting of her on the arm and striking her divers times’.
But ballad-makers were not known for letting the facts get in the way of a good story. Their function was to entertain and it did not suit their yarn if the main character was unsympathetic. So, without the benefit of any decent records regarding the events leading to the actual murder, we have to make do with what could be half-truths or even downright fantasy.
So let us just assume that Lady Jean Livingston was incredibly beautiful. Let us also assume that she married the older John Kincaid because her family wished it and, further, that Kincaid was a brute who made her life a misery.
The story goes that, after one nasty experience at the dinner table, the Laird was so unhappy with his young wife's conversation that he threw a dinner plate at her and split her lip. She ran weeping to her bedroom where the devil appeared before her to entice her into the ways of sin. It is highly unlikely that Satan made such an entrance although her nurse, Janet Murdo, may have influenced Jean.
‘He's not good enough for you, lamb,’ the older woman might have said as she comforted her young charge. ‘No woman should have to put up with that treatment,’ she might have continued, truthfully. ‘Something should be done about him. Something permanent.’
Perhaps the young Lady Warriston resisted the notion at first but might have grown more amenable to the suggestion as her husband's behaviour worsened. Finally, she agreed that her desperate situation called for a desperate remedy and the nurse said, ‘I know just the man to help us.’
At that time, Jean's father, Sir John Livingston, was enjoying the good graces of James VI – not exactly a secure position, for Stuart monarchs were notoriously mercurial in their friendships. But, still, he held a position of some influence. As one of the king's loyal advisers, he was in residence at Holyrood. The nurse left Warriston, which at the time was an estate on the outskirts of the city, and walked the mile to the palace below Arthur's Seat to seek out a groom, Robert Weir, who had been in the service of Sir John for a number of years. Bonnie Jean would, no doubt, have known him while she was growing up in the family home at Dunipace. Whether there had been any form of romantic link between the two is unrecorded but this is certainly hinted at in some accounts. Such a forbidden love – she was high born, after all, and he was but a glorified stable lad – would certainly explain why he was willing to turn killer on her behalf. However, even though his name was at the top of Nursie's list of potential hit men, Janet Murdo was not entirely certain he would agree.
‘I shall go seek him,’ she told the young woman, ‘and if I get him not, I shall seek another. And if I get none, I shall do it myself.’ Obviously, at least according to the ballads, Janet Murdo was determined that John Kincaid should be destined for the big sleep. But Lady Warriston held back. Robert Weir came to see her a number of times to discuss the problem, but she refused to speak with him. Finally, on Tuesday 1 July 1600, the terrible trio got together to flesh out the murder plot.
That night, Lady Warriston saw to it that her husband drank more than his usual share of wine. His senses thus dulled, he set off for bed and a night of drunken dreams. Robert Weir, meanwhile, had been hiding in the cellar and, after her husband retired for the night, Lady Jean came to him and led him through the house to the laird's bedchamber. Kincaid's sleep was not as sound as they would have liked for he woke when they came into the room and started to rise. Robert Weir, a strong man, leaped across the room and punched him on the jugular vein – or the ‘vane-organ’, as it is called in the later indictment. Kincaid fell from the bed and Weir slammed his booted foot down into his belly. The man cried out and the groom, fearing that the sound would be heard in other parts of the house, sat on his chest and wrapped his fingers round Kincaid's throat to ensure that any further noise would be stillborn. Kincaid kicked and struggled but the groom was too heavy for him. He clawed at the big hands round his neck but the man's grip was too tight for him. He lashed out at his attacker but Weir was too powerful to feel his puny blows. Finally, the movements beneath him slowed and dimmed until the body hung loosely from his hands, erupting blood vessels staining the whites of his bulging eyes pink, his tongue swollen and lolling from his mouth.
According to her own confession, given to a minister as she awaited execution, Lady Jean Warriston fled the room just as Robert Weir began to throttle her husband. She heard his stifled cries and groans but could listen or watch no more, so took refuge in the main hall, where the flames died in the grate as her husband's life ebbed away in the bedchamber. She waited there until Robert Weir came to her and said the deed was done. She wanted to go away with the groom, she said, but he refused. If the murder was not discovered, he told her, then she could say he died of natural causes; if it were uncovered, then he would flee the country and take the full blame. That, and the eagerness with which he embraced the murder plot, strongly suggests that there was something more between them.
The murder, however, was discovered but again, no one knows exactly how. At any rate, the following morning, Lady Jean Warriston, Janet Murdo and two other servants were
arrested. Robert Weir, as soon as he heard, was as good as his word for he packed his bags and left in a marked manner. Lady Jean, meanwhile, tried to pretend to be a grieving wife.
‘At first, that I might seem to be innocent, I laboured to counterfeit weeping,’ she said, ‘but do what I would, I could not find a tear.’
As the women had been taken ‘red-hand’, not quite with her fingers round her husband's throat but certainly within hours of the murder, the trial could be heard before the magistrates of Edinburgh. Statutes decreed that it must take place within three days of the crime being committed. Justice in those days was swift if not always thorough. When it was clear that her protestations of innocence were falling on deaf ears, Lady Jean moved to exonerate the two servants from any blame.
‘They are both innocent and knew nothing of this deed before it was done,’ she confessed. Although one of them was brought to trial with her, of the other nothing is known. William Roughead, in his account of the case, surmises that this woman agreed to give evidence against her mistress, either willingly to save her own skin or after the application of the ‘Bootiekins’ – a hugely popular but foul method of torture in which the foot was slowly crushed.
Lady Jean also attempted to get Janet Murdo off the hook but only served to make things worse when she said that ‘when I told her what I was minded to do, she consented to the doing of it.’ Her confession was made to the Rev. James Balfour, a local minister, who published it later under the title:
A Worthy and Notable Memorial of the Great Work of Mercy which God wrought in the Conversion of Jean Livingston, Lady Warriston, who was Apprehended for the Vile and Horrible Murder of her Own Husband, John Kincaid, committed on Tuesday July 1 1600, for which she was Execute on Saturday following. Containing an Account of her Obstinacy, Earnest Repentance, and her Turning to God; of the Odd Speeches she used during her Imprisonment; of her Great and Marvelous Constancy, and of her Behaviour and her Manner of Death, Observed by one who was both a Seer and Hearer of What was Spoken.
Of course, it will never be known how much of what is contained in that document was simply Balfour's interpretation of events. Certainly, it seems Lady Jean was unwilling to cleave to her religion at first, throwing the reverend's proffered bible against the wall and dismissing his preaching as ‘trittle trattle’. But the Lady Jean of immediately after the murder was somewhat different from the Lady Jean who walked to The Maiden. In the hours after her arrest, she was in something of a rage and given to fits of temper. However, as she faced her death, she was calmer – a change attributed to her embracing her faith. According to Karl Marx, religion is the opium of the masses and Lady Jean had taken a lungful.
She came to trial on 3 July 1600. We do not know the form or extent of the evidence lodged against her or anything of the proceedings, such as they were. All we know is that she, Janet Murdo and the remaining servant were found guilty of the murder and were to be burned at the stake after first being ‘wirreit’ or strangled. She received the news calmly and with dignity. ‘She never spoke one word, nor altered her countenance,’ one eyewitness said later.
According to Rev. Balfour, her demeanour, after being sentenced, was a great change from the rage she had expressed before the trial. She had accepted her fate and was ready to deliver herself to her God. This dramatic transformation, though, was wrought only after thirty-seven straight hours of preaching from a total of fifteen ministers. Under such a barrage of homilies and exhortations to salvation, even the hardest of hearts would find it difficult to remain godless.
The nurse, though, was a different matter. Balfour found her to be ‘very evil’ and she wholeheartedly rejected his overtures, sending him scurrying back to Lady Jean, who was, by then, expressing a desire to see her baby son once more. At first the reverend and his colleagues were unwilling to allow this but they finally relented and the boy, who slept through the entire event, was brought to his mother's cell in the Edinburgh Tolbooth. She held him for the last time, kissed him tenderly on the head and then handed him back into the keeping of her dead husband's family.
Perhaps Lady Jean thought her father's influence would save her. After all, it was not unknown in Scottish justice for accused people to buy themselves out of trouble. But her father, for whatever reason, kept his distance from his condemned daughter. The only strings he pulled were in the manner and time of her death. Thanks to him, she was no longer to be ‘wirreit’ and burned but would, instead, meet her death on The Maiden, as befitted her station in life. And the execution would not take place, as was the custom, in the morning, but at a time when the great unwashed were unlikely to be abroad to witness it. However, the final decision as to when she would meet her doom was not shared with the young woman, leaving her in something of a limbo regarding her final preparations. Still, according to Rev. Balfour, she was now in a state of grace that shone from her like the sun. ‘You give me many frights,’ she told her jailers, ‘but the Lord will not allow me to be afrighted.’
After another lengthy bout of praying and preaching, during which she managed to snatch a few hours sleep, the magistrates attended Lady Jean Warriston. It was three in the morning of 5 July and she must have known immediately that her hour had come. For the first time, members of her family had come to see her and they showed an almost indecent haste in getting her out of the confines of the Tolbooth and on to The Maiden. Rev. Balfour was not pleased with this display of familial shame although his reasons were less out of anger for the woman's rejection than because he felt that they were depriving ‘God's people of that comfort which they might have in this poor woman's death’. What comfort the populace might draw from seeing a twenty-year-old woman being beheaded is hard to see but, perhaps, he felt her bravery and newfound faith would be an example to them.
However, her family was having none of it. They wanted their disgraced relative dispatched quickly, quietly and with the minimum of publicity. And so, after her brother-in-law had given her a forgiving kiss, Lady Jean Warriston was led to the Girth Toll, at the foot of the Canongate, where The Maiden had been sited for the event.
A shiver ran through her slender frame as she gazed at the dark towers of the device and the blade glittering in the torchlight. Rev. Balfour reassured her that ‘there was no death here, but a parting and entering into a better life’. This bolstered her spirits and she ascended the steps to the platform ‘as cheerfully as if she had been going to her wedding and not her death’.
The family desire for a discreet end to the scandal was not to be for, despite the early hour, a large crowd turned out. She spoke to them from the four corners of the platform, confessing her crime. She asked Rev. Balfour to accompany her to the foot of The Maiden, which he did. She thanked him and asked for some further words of comfort, which he also did. Then, obviously moved, he left her to her fate. He could not bear to see the young woman for whom he had developed such admiration put to death.
She stood patiently while the blindfold was draped over her eyes, even providing a pin to fasten it. Then she calmly allowed herself to be laid down on the block. She tried twice to kneel but the hangman insisted she lie down so that he could pull her feet behind her in order to stretch her neck further. While a friend held her hand, she began to pray and the headsman pulled the lever that would set the blade slicing down. It fell only a few inches and Lady Jean continued to pray. However, just as she began to intone ‘Into Thy hand, Oh Lord, I commend my soul’, the blade swept down.
Janet Murdo and the poor servant – the latter no doubt had little, if anything, to do with the murder – met their ends at roughly the same time on Castle Hill. Their sentence remained unchanged for they were first strangled then their bodies burned at the stake, the smoke rising into the already lightening July sky.
Robert Weir remained on the run for four years. How he was arrested is unknown but he did come to trial on 26 June 1604. Naturally, he was found guilty but there was no easy death on The Maiden or stake for him. He was to be taken to
a scaffold at Edinburgh's Cross and broken on the wheel. Although common on the continent, this was a highly unusual punishment in Britain. It had never happened in England and only once before in Scotland – in 1591, when a man was condemned for murdering his father. The horrific punishment saw Weir being bound to a cartwheel on a scaffold and then having every bone broken by the public hangman wielding ‘a coulter of ane pleuch’ – an iron cutting blade from a plough. His body was then left to hang on the wheel in a public place between Warriston and Leith as an example to others.
4
CORPSE AND ROBBERS
Helen Torrence and Jean Waldie, 1751–2
Scotland was not an easy place for surgeons to learn their trade although Scots are justifiably proud of their countrymen's achievements in medicine. Even the most casual glance down a list of pioneers reveals a host of surgeons and doctors from north of the Border who have been invaluable in furthering the cause of medical science. Among them are: brothers William and John Hunter, who distinguished themselves as surgeons; Sir James Young Simpson, who first determined the use of chloroform in the operating theatre; penicillin's discoverer, Sir Alexander Fleming; and James Syme, the first surgeon to recognise the advantages of anaesthetics.
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