Due to the intense public interest in the case, the trial was heard, not in the Granite City, but at Edinburgh's High Court, beginning on Monday 16 July 1934. The Crown proposed to lead 164 witnesses, including young Jeannie. There were 202 productions listed on the indictment, many of them linked to the all-important scientific evidence uncovered by Sir Sidney Smith's team. Professor John Glaister, Chair of Forensic Medicine at the University of Glasgow and an expert in the study of hair, was part of the team as well. He had also been involved in the Susan Newell case (see Chapter 10).
What none of the witnesses or experts could provide was a reason for Mrs Donald killing little Helen. The accused remained tight-lipped although she continued to deny the charge. She did not give evidence in her defence. Her team concentrated on trying to discredit the scientific evidence levelled by the crown. They insisted the findings were inconclusive and continually pointed to the lack of motive. Of course, there is no need to provide a motive under law, just the evidence that proves guilt to the satisfaction of the jury.
In his summing up for the jury, the judge, Lord Aitchison, said, ‘To your mind, to my mind, no motive could ever be adequate for taking the life of a child,’ and he added, ‘There are some crimes which are committed in darkness and gloom. This was one. When this foul thing was done there were only two persons present – the murderer and the victim.’
On the fifth and last day of the trial, the jury of ten men and five women took only eighteen minutes to reach their verdict. Jeannie Donald stood in the dock – eyes fixed straight ahead as the foreman stood to read out the decision. When the word ‘Guilty’ boomed out, she groaned and slumped to the side and only her police escort prevented her from falling. The despair that plaintive moan carried caused tears to well in the eyes of jury members and court observers.
Lord Aitchison cleaned and recleaned his glasses as the verdict was recorded. He had never passed the death sentence on anyone during his years on the bench and the fact that his first was a woman made it doubly difficult. Fixing his glasses on his nose, he stared at the accused from the bench and placed the black cap on his head. Jeannie Donald was to be taken from that place and kept in custody until Monday 13 August, when she was to be hanged by the neck until dead – the first woman to die on the gallows since Susan Newell in Glasgow eleven years ago.
Mrs Donald's lawyers lodged an appeal on 3 August. The wheels of justice grind notoriously slowly – when they grind at all – but they expected to have some sort of news within two weeks. But, the day after lodging the papers, Aberdeen's Lord Provost, Mr Henry Alexander, was required to cut short a holiday in Ballater to visit Craiginches Prison. There he met Jeannie Donald in her cell and read a letter from the Secretary of State for Scotland. It read:
With reference to the case of Jeannie Ewen or Donald, now being under sentence of death in His Majesty's Prison, Aberdeen, I have to inform you that, after full consideration, I have felt justified in advising His Majesty to respite execution of the capital sentence with a view to its committal to penal servitude for life.
It must have been a much-relieved Jeannie Donald who thanked the Lord Provost and then sank on to her bed. Ten days later she walked a mile from Craiginches to Aberdeen's railway station, accompanied by two prison guards, and boarded a train for Glasgow. She was to serve her sentence – which, in the end, lasted only ten years – at Duke Street Prison, the same prison where Susan Newell had walked to her death. The prisoner and her escort were in civilian dress and no one recognised the person who, only a few short weeks before, had been the most hated woman in the city.
Many commentators on the case, including Sir Sydney Smith, believed that she had never intended murder. What she did had been an attempt to chastise the girl for some upset and it had gone tragically wrong. During the post-mortem, pathologists discovered that Helen Priestly suffered from an enlarged thymus – a gland that should grow until the child is two years of age and then slowly reduce. But Helen's gland had not shrunk as it should have and it might have placed pressure on her heart. In the opinion of some medical men, this would leave the child susceptible to fainting or even death, should she receive a sudden shock.
So, let us assume that Helen, on her way upstairs with her loaf of bread from the Co-op, decides to bang on Mrs Donald's door and gallop away up to her flat. Let us also assume that Mrs Donald sees her coming and lies in wait – grabbing the girl, perhaps from behind. The sudden shock causes the youngster to lose consciousness, leading the woman to panic, thinking the child is dead. She drags the body into her house where she simulates the rape with some household implement (although no evidence was found in the house to support this). But, as the implement is being inserted into her vagina, the girl comes to life, perhaps brought round by the extreme pain. She screams – a scream heard by a slater working nearby but by no one else. Helen vomits and some of the matter catches in her throat. Mrs Donald's panic heightens and she wraps her fingers round the girl's throat to quieten her, squeezing tighter and tighter until the screaming stops, the struggling ceases and the girl lies lifeless on the linoleum.
She hides the body in a cinder box under the kitchen sink. Later examinations revealed no cinder box but marks of where it had once rested were clearly seen and it was assumed it had been destroyed because it was saturated with blood from the girl's horrific wounds. With the body out of sight, Mrs Donald goes about her business – ironing the dresses, feeding her daughter, taking her to the dance rehearsal. She also washes away what blood she can see. But blood will out, as she was to discover, and microscopic traces are found on the various household items taken away for examination. Then, during the early hours of the following morning, Helen is bundled into the sack – taking the cinders, household fluff and hairs with her – and dumped in the hallway.
But all this is mere supposition. Like Susan Newell before her, only the victim and her murderer knew what really happened in that cramped tenement hallway that Friday lunchtime. Helen Priestly never had the chance to tell. Jeannie Donald, although luckier than Susan Newell, also took her secret to the grave.
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Copyright
First published 2003
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This electronic edition published in 2014
ISBN: 978 1 84502 931 9 in EPub format
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Copyright © Douglas Skelton 2003
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Deadlier Than the Male Page 17