A Sink of Atrocity: Crime in 19th-Century Dundee (11 page)

It was becoming obvious that the growing industrial centre of Dundee needed a more efficient body of lawmen, but in the meantime, the Charlies did their best. In early June 1823 when a gang of five men roamed the streets attacking everybody, the local watchman sprang his rattle to summon aid. Once a number of watchmen gathered they pursued the gang and arrested four of them. The fifth escaped. A month later two members of another raucous gang attacked a couple of young gentlemen who were unfortunate enough to cross their path. The local watchman arrived just as the kicks and punches began to rain down and the attackers ran away. Nevertheless, crime in Dundee continued to rise.

One period in August 1823 gives an example of the typical crimes in Dundee. One Friday night a group of thieves tore the padlock from a spirit cellar in the Vault, but ran away when somebody shouted a challenge. On the same night, and possibly by the same people, there was an equally abortive attempt on a spirit cellar in the Horse Wynd, while a more successful thief eased into a Barrack Street shoemaker’s with a false key. It might have been the same person who tried to rob another shoemaker in the Overgate, but once again a passer-by scared him off. During the week there was a break-in in Hilltown, where a girl, lying sick in her bed, could only watch as the thief casually sorted through her possessions to see what was worth stealing. On Monday a High Street house was robbed, while three masons beat up two men in Lilybank. Two of them tried the same thing on a lone gentleman walking in the Murraygate, but they found they had a tiger by the tail as he fought back, knocking both down.

A pickpocket found easy prey in the crowd waiting for the Perth packet boat on Tuesday, and at nine that same evening three men jumped a lone woman walking past Logie on her way to Lochee. They grabbed her basket and a respectable twenty-five shillings. After a surprisingly quiet Wednesday, a thief roamed the Craigie Estate on Thursday, picked the lock of a bothie and a chest inside and stole the overseer’s clothes. The following Monday brought more trouble to Craigie as two horsemen carrying smuggled whisky met a customs officer head-on. There must have been a few seconds of hesitation, but when the local farm workers backed the officer, the smugglers dismounted and escaped in a wheat field.

The following week was not much better, with pickpockets rife in Dundee. They infested the first fair on the Monday, and that night a male and female team picked the pocket of a visiting countryman. When the victim noticed and protested, the Dundee crowd gathered in support and chased the thieves into a house, grabbed the watch from the woman and dragged the pickpockets to the Town House jail. In a touch of typical Dundee irony, while the pickpockets were safely tucked away, an opportunist thief stripped their Blackness Road house of anything valuable.

That robbery was only one of a clutch. On Saturday night thieves took the bedclothes from a house in Overgate while a gardener’s house in Perth Road was also robbed. Later in the week the watchmen stopped a man who was carrying an armful of clothes through the Scouringburn. Although he claimed to have found them on the Seabraes, the watchmen arrested him anyway, while Patrick Mackay arrested the notorious Thiefy Doig and found a number of false keys in his pockets. False keys were quite common in Dundee, and in another incident, a thief used them to rob a warehouse and heckle house (an area in a spinning mill where flax was teased and combed out) in the West Port. He took a quantity of hemp and yarn.

There was a new type of pickpocket at the Fish Market on Saturday 12th September 1823, when a man had his pocket literally cut out and his pocketbook stolen, while in a High Street close a man was attacked and robbed of 7d and a piece of beef, all the money he had in the world and his Sunday dinner. On the second Sunday in September 1823 there was a riot in Couttie’s Wynd and the watchmen moved in and arrested four people.

So the merry-go-round continued: petty theft and petty robbery, footpads and pickpockets with the occasional riot. The Charlies tried their best, but when they were absent, the Dundee public fought crime without them. For example, at the beginning of May 1824 four gentlemen ran riot in Monifieth until the locals rose in justified wrath, chased them into a house in Broughty Ferry and remained outside as the gentlemen cowered behind locked doors. That same month a con woman and her daughter took up position at the Dens Bridge, buying eggs and butter from the countrywomen with counterfeit money. When the countrywomen realised they were being duped they took swift revenge with their fists. The con woman had to grab her daughter and run.

The first week of July 1824 was also busy. It started with a footpad attacking a mason and grabbing his week’s wages and his coat, and continued when two men assaulted a woman near Trade’s Hall. In the latter incident a passing gentleman chased the muggers before the watchmen arrived. There was also an ugly riot in Chapelshade. This last was fairly serious, with a couple of young men badly injured and a gang of thugs rampaging down Dudhope Wynd. The watchmen kept well out of the way.

There are a couple of obvious trends in this catalogue of crime from the 1820s. The first was that the watchmen were struggling to cope, and the second was that the ordinary Dundee people were neither overawed nor frightened by criminals. When the opportunity arose, they did their bit to help. However, they were unhappy at the performance of the official guardians of the law.

Early in December 1823 thieves placed a ladder against the wall of the New Inn Entry in the High Street, scampered up it, drew up the window sash of the writing offices of John Ogilvy and Son, smashed one of the shutters and snaked in. The fact that they robbed the offices of a few pounds and about twelve shillings’ worth of stationery was less important than the fact that the whole affair took place only a few yards from the beat of the local watchmen.

Some Dundonians believed there were four watchmen in the High Street, and their image was of a group of idlers who lounged in the piazza, the covered area in front of the Town House, gossiping and taking snuff for the bulk of their watch, pausing only to shout out the hour as the clock struck and then return to their seat on the Town House stairs, safe and snug behind their lantern. In reality there were only two watchmen for the entire High Street. From ten at night until six in the morning, one man would patrol from the offices of the Dundee Bank at Castle Street to the English Chapel at Nethergate, a beat that took half an hour. The second man worked the north side of the street and the luckenbooths. Neither beat included the New Inn Entry, so the watchmen could only have interfered with the robbery by neglecting their duty, to the detriment of the subscribers who paid their wages. It is significant that no robberies took place in the shops and offices these men patrolled. However, that same week, a gentleman was wending his uneven way homeward when he saw a watchman sleeping beneath his lighted lantern. Removing the lamp, the gentleman used it to find his way home but discarded it in the street so as the watchman could later find it.

As 1823 slid into 1824, the situation in Dundee did not improve. Crime continued to dominate the night-time streets. The first week in February saw a thief rob a house in the Lower Chapelshade despite the entire family being home; a footpad badly beat a pedestrian in Lochee Road; and a man assault a woman in the Overgate and then, for reasons known only to himself, jump into a well. A compassionate Dundonian crowd rescued him. Even worse was the pack of men who set their dogs on a lone woman walking at the back of the Law. She escaped but her clothes were ripped to shreds. The second week saw a girl robbed in the Cowgate and a number of attempted break-ins. On Saturday night in the Murraygate thieves bent aside a metal security bar across a shop window, tore open the wooden shutters and got inside. After rifling the place they left through the front door. As so often happened in Dundee, though, a passer-by chased them, but they escaped in the labyrinth of closes and lanes behind the Murraygate. It was little consolation to the shop owner when some of his property was later found concealed in a Wester Craigie haystack.

The same night in the Chapelshade a dog chased away a robber from a fleshers’ shop, while in Castle Street a hopeful thief climbed up a lamppost to the second-floor window of Mr Aitken’s warehouse. He managed to smash the window, but when the shutters held, he was heard to say, ‘Damn it – it won’t do,’ and retreated in defeat. In Barrack Street, a thief used a crowbar to break into Scott the watchmaker’s. When the brand new steamboat
George the Fourth
was on fire at the West Protection Wall, the thief wandered down to watch the fun, but in the confusion he dropped his booty, which was recovered from the sticky mud of the dock. On the Monday night a man dressed as a seaman robbed Keiller’s the confectioner’s, but the watchmen did succeed in rounding up seven young men who were causing trouble in the streets.

There were more personal assaults, too: footpads robbed a man in the Murraygate; a man attacked a woman at Peep o’ Day; and in the Kirk Wynd a gang of thieves stole a watch from a man. When the victim recognised one of the thieves, the watch was discarded.

Sometimes the watchman was in the right place at the right time, but he still did not help. Such a situation arose at the end of May 1824, when a watchman in the Meadows saw a group of men surround a lone woman and knock her down. Rather than going to her aid, the watchman merely watched, as he was afraid he might be the next victim. A month later a gang attacked a helpless drunk in the Wellgate. Again the watchman thought it too dangerous to interfere, but instead loosed his dog, which scared off the attackers. Nevertheless, the security of the innocent in Dundee could not depend on a dog; every year it was becoming increasingly obvious that the current system of watchmen required a drastic overhaul.

Given the propensity of the people of nineteenth-century Dundee to take care of their own affairs, it is hardly surprising that they should take measures to protect themselves and their possessions. While some were rumoured to carry weapons, in February 1824 the people in the Murraygate banded together to hire four watchmen exclusively for their own property. The
Advertiser
of 4th March 1824 claimed that the previous week had seen ‘assault, shop breaking and petty theft … in every quarter of the town’. The same newspaper said there was not enough room to print all the crimes, and added that some shops had employed night watchmen.

On 24th June 1824 a Police Act for Dundee received the Royal Assent. The Act covered lighting, cleansing, paving and crime prevention, including the establishment of a new jail. It was a holistic approach to the organisation of the town and included extended boundaries, westward as far as the Blackness Toll, northward to Clepington and eastward to Mayfield. The River Tay was a natural boundary to the south.

Within these enlarged boundaries, the new Dundee police force began their task of reducing crime. They retained the system of watchmen, but added a day patrol and a night patrol. A Police Court was also established, sitting at ten o’clock every morning. The judges were all men of authority and presumably of common sense, if perhaps lacking in legal knowledge. They were the Provost and the magistrates, the Dean of Guild, the sheriff and his substitute. These men dealt quickly with the petty offenders, imprisoning for up to sixty days or fining up to a £5 limit, but any serious offences were passed to a higher court, with the worst offenders being held in Dundee’s jail until the next Circuit Court.

The Police Act did not remedy all Dundee’s ills, however. There were not enough police, not enough watchmen and the areas on the fringes or just outwith the boundaries were badly lit and without the benefit of a law officer. But it was a start, and the newly-formed police force prepared to walk their beats and make the streets safer for the respectable citizens of Dundee.

Mr Andrew Cunningham of Carlogie House was an eminently respectable man. As the factor of the Right Honourable the Earl of Dalhousie, Lord Lieutenant of the County, he was responsible for ensuring the Earl’s estates ran smoothly and the rents were collected on time. It was a responsible job with many benefits, including first-class travel on the railways. Yet at the end of 1866 Andrew Cunningham was at the centre of perhaps the biggest mystery to hit nineteenth-century Dundee and one which was discussed the length and breadth of the British Isles.

Towards the end of December 1866, Cunningham collected £1862 in rents from the Panmure Estate. He rolled the money, mainly in £100 notes, into a single bundle, tied it securely and placed it in a travelling bag. On the morning of Thursday 27th he slung the bag over his shoulder, left Carlogie House and took a coach to the railway station at Carnoustie. He stepped into a first-class carriage. It was just after half-past eleven and he intended to place the money safely in a Dundee bank.

There were two gentlemen already seated in the carriage and they asked him, quite politely, if he would mind if they smoked. He said he did not mind and they filled their pipes and began to smoke. The next thing Mr Cunningham knew, the guard at Dundee was shaking him awake, the gentlemen had gone, his travelling bag had been moved and all his money was missing.

The police created a picture of the theft. The two gentlemen were seen boarding the train at Arbroath, and at Broughty Ferry a lady tried to enter Cunningham’s carriage. She found the door locked and called the guard but when she saw Cunningham sleeping heavily on the seat with his legs sprawled across the floor and the place reeking with smoke she decided to find another carriage. There was no sign of the other gentlemen. The next stop was West Ferry Station, and an entire party entered the carriage. There was the merchant Peter Stewart and his lady, together with Charles Smith of Bartley Lodge, Broughty Ferry and his female companion, and they had to step across the recumbent form of Cunningham to reach their seats. They noticed that he was sleeping very deeply and after failing to wake him at Dundee they asked a guard to run for a doctor. Nevertheless, they did manage to wake Cunningham before the doctor arrived, and thought his face was slightly distorted and his eyes fiery and slightly protruding.