Bloody Valentine

by Douglas Skelton

  And so he set off, leaving his young love alone in their Dingwall home. But he was not going to Forfar. He was heading for Montrose – and another woman.

  When John Adam reappeared in her life, Jean Brechin was close to fifty years of age – although even her sister was unsure as to her exact age. Jean had worked as a cook for many notable families and had carefully squirrelled her money away to allow her to buy a grocery shop in Montrose. She lived in the back of the premises and had a thriving business. She was not exactly rich but she was comfortably well off. Somehow, John Adam had heard about his former girlfriend’s good fortune and this had prompted him to get back in touch with her. During his week away from Dorothy, he paid her a visit, using his old charm and talent for lying to impress her. He was doing very well himself, he said, and told her he was working in Inverness as a lawyer. He said that, over the years, he had often thought of her and what they had once had. If only he had been more mature back then, perhaps things would have been different. He still harboured love for her and would be honoured if she would consider rekindling their old flame.

  Jean, described as ‘stoutish, plain and ill-favoured’, was bowled over. She had almost given up on ever meeting a man with whom she could share her life and her money. Now here was this handsome face from her past, prosperous and wishing to take her hand so that they could spend their lives together in Inverness. Naturally she agreed.

  John stayed with her for about a week before returning to the Highlands. After all, he had a practice to tend. The date of their marriage was set for 11 March 1835 and he promised to come back before then to help Jean wind up her affairs in Montrose. In the meantime, if she wished to write to him, she must address her letters care of John Anderson in Dingwall, with whom he was lodging.

  And so John Adam returned to the Highlands to become John Anderson again. In March, a letter arrived, the first he had ever received, Dorothy later said. He did not let her read it at first but said it was from his family. He had to return to Forfar, he lied, to claim some money left to him by an uncle who had died in the West Indies. However, Dorothy was no longer so naïve and in love that she believed everything he said. He had never before mentioned an uncle in the West Indies, let alone a relative with money. At any rate, the letter was postmarked ‘Montrose’. She caught a glimpse of what it said before John lit his pipe with it and noted that it was ‘very ill-written’; the writer said something like ‘my mother is very angry with me for working to come north’.

  Once again, John Anderson re-adopted his true John Adam persona and travelled south-east. In Montrose, he helped his bride-to-be sell her shop and empty her bank account and also arranged to have her furniture shipped to Dingwall. Then they were married in her mother’s village of Laurencekirk. During this time, her brother-in-law had many conversations with him and found him ‘of sound mind’ and said he ‘thought highly of his conversation’.

  Now married, John Adam brought his wife to Inverness where he left her in a lodging house while he went off to take care of business. That business involved depositing £100 in the bank account of John Anderson.

  When he returned home to Dingwall, Dorothy noticed he had on a new pair of trousers and a waistcoat. He told her his uncle had not left him as much as he had wished but his mother had made up the shortfall by giving him cash left to him by his own father years before. He had other good news for her – an aunt had died, leaving him a considerable amount of good furniture. Clearly, it was open season on the Adam family for his aged relatives seemed to be dropping like flies. There would be a chest of drawers, a trunk, a bed and a box filled with clothes, blankets and pillows. The furniture was on its way and a few days later he went to Inverness to see, he claimed, if it had arrived.

  He was indeed awaiting the arrival of furniture but it belonged to Jean Brechin not a deceased aunt. He visited her now and then in the Inverness lodging house in Chapel Street where he had told her she was to stay temporarily. The landlady there noted that the woman read her Bible every night. Jean, though, was becoming restless – she wanted to be in her new home and she wanted her things around her. Her husband told her they would go there as soon as her furniture was delivered. When it finally arrived he put her off, promising to come back for her soon, before setting out for Dingwall in a hired cart with her belongings on the back.

  Dorothy greeted the arrival of the much-heralded goods in Dingwall with great pleasure. However, she was puzzled by the initials ‘J.B’ that were embroidered on some of the linen and clothing. But John had a ready answer – his aunt had once been engaged to marry a man named Burns who had asked her to have his initials sewn into them. Also included in the haul was a selection of scales and weights of the type used in shops.

  John Adam now had Jean’s money and possessions. The only problem was that he also still had Jean. He was married now – they were legally man and wife. And not until death would they part.

  On Monday 30 March 1835, John Adam visited his wife for the last time at her lodgings to tell her that everything was ready. She could leave with him that very night and within a matter of hours they would be together in their new home. They dined on barley broth and then set out in the gathering darkness for Dingwall, Mrs Adam carrying with her an umbrella and a small basket filled with some of her belongings. They arrived at the Kessock ferry that was to carry them across the Beauly Firth to their new life. On the far side the woman thanked the ferryman and followed her husband into the night.

  Adam led his wife through the darkness to the ruined cottage at Kilcoy. He’d had murder in mind from the start of their journey and, although this had not been where he’d intended finishing her off, a cacophony of demons clamoured in his brain. ‘This is as good a place as any,’ they urged. ‘It’s now or never,’ they shrieked. ‘Do it NOW! Go on – KILL HER!’ they demanded. When she stooped to tie her garter, he seized his chance. Kicking her leg from under her, he pounced on her and pressed his hands over her mouth and nose to cut off her air. She struggled and writhed beneath him, her fingers grasping at his wrists, fists pounding at his chest, legs kicking and jerking beneath his weight. But he held on, tightening his grip until the woman’s struggles slowed and weakened and finally stilled. But he was not finished. He turned her over so that she was face down and stamped on her head until blood oozed from her ears. Then he carried her into the cottage and went through her pockets, taking any money, letters and personal items he could find.

  But Jean was not yet dead. A small groan escaped from her mouth and, in the moonlight, he could see that her lips were moving slightly. Realising that his bloody work was not yet over, he clamped his hands over her face again but, this time, with such force that he could feel her jaw cracking and breaking. He may also, at some point, have picked up a rock and battered her head with it. Jean’s body lay still again but, just in case she was still alive, he pushed the remnants of a stone wall on top of her and made sure she was fully covered with earth and rocks. Perhaps, if she were ever found, it would be thought she had simply been caught under the wall as it fell.

  With the demonic choir in his head now silent, he began his long walk home, only to encounter the ghostly figure on the road. The sight so terrified him that he threw the letters and personal items he had stolen from Jean away although he kept the cash, the basket and the umbrella. Ghosts were one thing – valuables were another.

  No living person saw him return from the scene of the crime that night although many had seen him in the company of Jean Brechin – too many for his marriage to remain a secret. There was her family, to begin with, as well as the landlady at the Inverness lodging house. Then there was the ferryman who had seen them together. And what about the carter who had transported the furniture to Dingwall? And there was the address he had given Jean – John Adam, care of John Anderson, Dingwall.

  On Sunday 13 April – three days after the discovery of the body – the net tightened. John Anderson and his wife Dorothy were awakened in the early hours of the
morning by a banging on their door. It was the authorities and they had a warrant for his arrest. He was pulled out of bed, clapped in irons and marched through the streets to the Town House, where his dead wife’s body lay as if in state. Witnesses identified him as the man they had seen with the dead woman but he quickly denied this. When he was confronted with the body, he held his hands over his face for an instant, saying he was unused to such sights. The grim-faced men around him had no time for such squeamishness for they suspected it was guilt that made him flinch away. Now they planned to put him under more pressure, namely the Ordeal by Touch. The procurator fiscal told him to lift the left hand of the dead woman. ‘Take that hand in your own and say if you know it,’ he ordered.

  Anderson, his nerve restored, gripped the cold, dead hand and said, ‘No, I do not know it.’

  The fiscal was not convinced. ‘Lay your hand on that face and say if you ever saw that face before. Then place your hand on that bosom and say if your hand was ever there before.’

  Anderson did as he was told, swearing, ‘I have never seen this woman before – either alive or dead.’

  ‘Very well,’ said the fiscal, no doubt disappointed that John had not broken down and confessed, ‘we are all in the presence of God who knows best.’

  Anderson denied knowing Jean Brechin. He even denied having been in the army. He denied his real name was John Adam, insisting he had been born near Dalkeith and even providing a detailed family history. Either he was incredibly quick-witted or he had been planning this for some time. He said he had actually married Dorothy, described the ceremony and named witnesses. He said he could prove it, for he had a marriage certificate somewhere if only they would let him go to look for it. But the authorities were not taken in by his careful deceit. They knew that, if they gave him an inch, he would take a few hundred miles and put those miles between them and him. They kept him locked up and, probably armed with information provided by the shocked Dorothy, asked the army to send two witnesses to identify him as their deserter. Sergeant James Bleakly and Private Joseph Collier arrived from Ipswich, studied the accused through his cell door and confirmed that he was, indeed, John Adam, deserter and thief.

  Within a few weeks the prisoner had changed his tune. Yes, he was John Adam and, yes, he had been in the cavalry and had deserted before bringing poor Dorothy north to Scotland. He admitted marrying Jean but insisted that he did not murder her. She had become tired of the lodging house at Inverness and wanted to leave. He went with her as far as the ferry where he left her at her request. She was to get herself settled, he claimed, and then write to him. That was the last he saw of her.

  While he languished in prison awaiting trial, there was some debate over the disposal of Jean Brechin’s estate. The question was whether, given John’s relationship with Dorothy, the marriage was valid. If it were, what was left of Jean’s cash and property would fall to the Crown. If not, it would go to her family. The family was supported in its claim by the minister who had married Jean and John – a curious position for a man of the cloth to take, considering he was suggesting that a lawful marriage was superseded by a sinful relationship. The first suggestion was that the estate should be split between the Crown and the family but, finally, the former gave up its claim because it was decided, as the murder had occurred within a year and a day of the ceremony, that the marriage was officially ‘dissolved’.

  John Adam, alias John Anderson, faced trial for the murder of Jean Brechin in Inverness on 18 September 1835. Justice in those days was swift for it lasted only two hours and the jury was out for a mere forty minutes before it returned to pronounce him guilty. As the judge donned the black cap and sentenced him to be hanged on Friday 16 October, Adam jumped up and screamed, ‘You have condemned an innocent man! I am condemned at the bar of Man but I will not be condemned at the bar of God!’ Warders seized and restrained him and, during the struggle, Adam dropped a cut-throat razor which he had hidden. Perhaps he had planned to make an escape bid or perhaps he had intended to cheat the hangman. At any rate, he was taken to Inverness jail where he was kept under constant watch in the condemned cell. Candles were kept burning all night long so that guards could ensure he did not attempt any mischief, prompting a complaint from the prisoner that the light interrupted his sleep.

  He continued to profess his innocence, even insisting on it in a letter to Dorothy which, according to some sources, was written in his own blood. The young woman visited him once in jail, on the eve of his execution. She asked him to confess but, even then, he refused. As she left, he advised her to ‘beware of bad company’ which was somewhat ironic considering the company she had kept for the year between March 1834 and April 1835.

  On the eastern shore of the Moray Firth, about a mile from Inverness, the gallows were erected on a site known as the Longman’s Grave. Adam had told his jailers that he did not wish to be taken by cart to the rope and ‘hung like a dog’ but such was the public interest in the case that his hopes of walking his last mile had to be abandoned. Over 8,000 people turned out to see him die. A convoy of three carriages pushed its way through the crowds. Inside one sat Adam, wearing a long black cloak, and the hangman, who had been brought from Ayrshire to do the job, as there was no dedicated executioner in Inverness. The other carriages contained magistrates and local dignitaries. Meanwhile, a small army of 1,100 special constables, sworn in for the day, helped keep the peace. As he climbed to the gallows, Adam gazed across the water to the ridge where he had murdered his wife. Perhaps he felt remorse for the life he had snuffed out. Perhaps he felt sadness for the lives he had tainted with his philandering and thieving ways. And perhaps he felt nothing at all as he turned his back on the view and faced the crowd. A minister suggested he sing the fifty-first psalm but another thought the thirty-first was better. Whatever he felt in his heart, Adam died still claiming he was innocent of the crime.

  After the execution, it emerged he had confessed. A fellow prisoner who shared a cell with Adam claimed he had admitted murdering his wife. He had also told him the story of the ghostly figure on the road. That Adam would blurt everything out to a total stranger – and a criminal at that – seems doubtful but not impossible. The ghost story may have merely been a fiction designed to freeze the blood and improve the tale.

  The judge had specified that Adam be buried within the precincts of the prison so his body was planted in an upright position beneath a passageway running between the courthouse and the jury room. Why he was interred in a standing position remains a mystery.

  He was the last person to be hanged publicly in Inverness. It would be seventy-three years before another convicted murderer met his end in the Highland capital. He was Joseph Hume, who was hanged in 1908 in the recently built Porterfield Prison but, this time, the execution was behind closed doors. Curiously, Hume, found guilty of murdering a man near Elgin, was also an army deserter.

  With his ‘awful death’, Adam had fulfilled the first part of the prophecy made by his dead Lanarkshire lover in his dream all those years ago. Of course, whether he was reunited with her in the world to come cannot be said. Death, however, did not end the man’s wandering ways. Some years after his execution, the former prison in Bridge Street was torn down, so his body had to be hauled up and it was reinterred under the front steps of the police office in Castle Wynd. In 1962, that office was also demolished and Adam’s remains were on the move again – this time to be buried under the front entrance of the new police office at Farraline Park. In 1975, he was moved again and placed under the police headquarters on Old Perth Road. Still he could not rest. In 1998, Northern Constabulary planned to move to a new headquarters, ironically, very near to the Longman’s Grave area where Adam had his date with the hangman.

  For many, this was a move too far for the man’s remains. There were calls for him to be interred either in the Old High Church graveyard in Chapel Street or back at Castle Wynd where he had first been buried.

  There was, however, a problem. The polic
e knew he had been buried under the building in 1975 but no record had been taken of his exact whereabouts. Radar equipment was employed to trace the remains that had been placed in a wooden coffin and then encased in concrete. However, after extensive but fruitless searching, it was decided that Adam’s bones would lie in peace this time. In February 1999, the police announced that, after the demolition of the old building was completed, a plaque would be erected to mark the spot of his final resting place and a rose bush was planted in his memory.

  After over 160 years, John Adam had finally settled down.

  3

  THE DEADLY SUITOR

  John Thomson

  In July 1857, a well-to-do twenty-one-year-old Glasgow girl was on trial for her life. She was charged with poisoning her older French lover by lacing cups of hot chocolate with cyanide. Once she had been passionately in love with him but, earlier that year, he had become tiresome and something of an obstacle to her plans to marry a wealthier and more socially acceptable suitor. She was young, she was beautiful and she was the daughter of a respectable and well-known city architect. She was Madeleine Hamilton Smith.