A Sink of Atrocity: Crime in 19th-Century Dundee (15 page)

Their natural leader was Peter Wallace, a bold young man who, if life had afforded him better opportunities, might have made a name for himself in more profitable ventures, but in the early nineteenth century the poor were destined to remain so and authority favoured the fortunate. The others in the gang clustered around him, and as they grew older and their petty pilfering turned more serious, their names grew known and the
Dundee Advertiser
called them a ‘pest and terror of all’.

There were the Shaw brothers, one of whom moved to Glasgow in his early teens. There was Alexander Gardiner, nearly as bold and fearless as Wallace in his flouting of authority. There was John Gray, a weaver who habitually carried a knife and James Ferguson, his close companion. Add the seaman, David Scott and the Stewart brothers and the nucleus of the gang was complete: a hardy bunch made desperate by poverty and violent by necessity and whisky.

From stealing fruit and biscuits, the gang graduated to more serious crimes – housebreaking and theft became common and by the early 1820s Peter Wallace led the most notorious gang in Dundee. Nevertheless in late 1822 and early 1823 a series of hammer blows destroyed their cohesion. In the absence of a proper police force, the watchmen and constables of Dundee could still act with some vigour and some of the more active members of the gang were laid by the heels and thrust into the pestilent cells of the gaol. Even worse, or perhaps better for the long-suffering citizens of the town, Peter Wallace gave up his criminal activities and found an honest job.

Dundee, and particularly the outlying districts of the Hawkhill and the Scouringburn, began to relax a little. For a few months there was peace; people could worry less about their property when they were at work and could walk the streets with more confidence. The quiet, however, could not last when the streets were not policed and youths were bored, frustrated and knew only violence and theft as a means of existence. In early spring 1823 the jail opened its doors and the young men of Wallace’s gang swarmed back into the streets. They had no jobs, no permanent homes, no future and no reason to like the authority that had locked them up or conventional life that had constantly rejected them. The gang collected: Gardiner, Gray and the Shaw brothers together again, roaming the streets, breaking into houses, breaking heads, and breaking every law they could. When temptation forced Peter Wallace from the straight and narrow to the broad path he knew so much better, mayhem was as inevitable as the tide of the Tay.

Robbery was a way of life, theft from houses and shops a pastime, violence habitual, but with Wallace’s astute brain behind them they soon found a novel way of making ends meet. For years there had been a virtual war in Scotland between those who illegally distilled and sold whisky and the forces of the Excise, backed often by the military. Dundee was a natural target for the whisky smugglers, having a growing and thirsty population and being within striking distance of the Highlands. One well-trodden route for this peat reek was by way of the Angus Glens, the Sidlaw Hills and the notorious smuggling village of Auchterhouse. Usually on foot and driving a packhorse, the smugglers headed for the western suburbs, congested, busy and full of hard-working and hard-drinking millworkers. It was even sweeter that there were no peace officers on patrol, so the smugglers made hay while the sun shone. However, Peter Wallace saw his opportunity and decided to rob the smugglers.

After all, what could be easier? The smugglers could hardly complain to the authorities. The commodity they carried had a ready market and it was being taken right to the hunting ground of Wallace’s gang. As the smugglers slid from the countryside with its patrols of dragoons and Excisemen, they relaxed, and walked into the ambushes set by Wallace. On one notable occasion Wallace’s gang watched while revenue men and smugglers exchanged blows and calmly carried off the prize: two ankers of finest peat reek, the illicit whisky of the Highland glens.

It could not last, of course. Sooner or later even the patience of the Dundonians would break and retaliation would be harsher for the months and years of torment. The behaviour of June 1823 provided the spur. First there was the Sabbath day riot, but that was followed a few days later by a further incursion into the Scouringburn. One of the Shaw brothers wandered in, alone, unsupported and probably drunk, but no doubt sure that the reputation of the Wallace gang would defend him. As usual, he was aggressive, pushing people aside, but when he knocked a woman to the ground, the people of the Scouringburn turned on him.

A crowd gathered to help the injured woman and Shaw ran, but the Scouringburn blood was up and they chased him. Jumping over garden walls, Shaw hid in an outhouse, but the people followed, kicked down the door and dragged him out. There was a flurry of boots and fists until Shaw was subdued, somebody tied his hands with a piece of rope and he was hauled unceremoniously to the lock-up house and thrown in to await the judgement of authority. And although Peter Wallace was locked away, Dundee was not yet finished with the pestilent gang that had caused so much terror.

If the members of the gang had taken any note of public affairs they might have been more on their guard. Following the suggestion of the local Justice of the Peace, the people of the Scouringburn had held a meeting and sworn in a body of acting constables to patrol the streets and keep down predators such as the Shaws or Peter Wallace. Forty volunteers had come forward, determined to restore order to their neighbourhood, and every night they marched, eight at a time, in search of Wallace’s followers.

One by one the pests were hunted down and arrested. One of the most violent was Alexander Gardiner. When he was seen in the Fish Market, a long way from the Scouringburn, a peace officer moved in at once. Gardiner did not come quietly and in the ensuing struggle he tried to throttle the constable and might have succeeded if a street porter had not run to help. Subdued and arrested, Gardiner was thrown in the lock-up house, with two porters standing on guard. Catching Gardiner, however, was not quite as easy as holding him, for while the porters remained stubbornly in place at the front of the lock-up house, some other members of the gang slipped over the back wall, forced open the door behind the sentinel’s back and freed their companion. The porters apparently saw nothing.

The war against Wallace’s gang continued, with skirmishes constant and victories on both sides. The Scouringburn constables dragged the streets, searching every known depraved den and filthy haunt of the gang. They started at the Witchknowe and ended at the Wellgate where they located Ferguson, grabbed him and hauled him, protesting and swearing, to the lock-up house. They entered the long, densely packed Overgate and found the second Shaw and another man, possibly Scott, in the festering sewer of Broad Close. The two fugitives, as instinctive as any hunted animals, scrambled up the side of a house, slipped over the roof and descended into Tay Street, where they jumped a fence and headed for their own territory of the Scouringburn. However, the constables were tenacious and followed hard on their heels. Shaw and Scott were both arrested in a seedy close off Small’s Wynd and joined Ferguson in the lock-up house.

The gang was being whittled down, but rather than go into hiding, the remnants continued to act as if they were immune to justice. On the evening of Wednesday 24th June, John Gray and Ferguson were again on the rampage. Once more in the Scouringburn, they picked on a quiet man named Robert Petrie, punched him to the ground, kicked out some of his teeth and bloodied his face. Gray might have stabbed him to death if his mother had not made a belated appearance and hauled back her son. The drama was resolved when a group of locals came hurrying up and the attackers sauntered away, laughing as they reminded each other of Gardiner’s escape from confinement.

The squeeze continued, however, and Alexander Gardiner was soon once again in jail. He had been with a group of wild men in David and Helen Mathewson’s pub in the Hawkhill. The Mathewsons were probably well aware of the gang’s reputation and would watch them closely. The drink had flowed freely, but the money to pay for it was less forthcoming, and when David Mathewson saw one of Gardiner’s companions stealing from a wall press he immediately challenged him. The thief made a quick exit out of the nearest window. David Mathewson slammed Gardiner into a chair and warned him to stay there until he saw what had been stolen. Gardiner tried to hit Mathewson with a bottle,Mathewson blocked the blow and his daughter ran out of the pub to find a policeman, slamming shut the door behind her, but not before Gardiner’s other companions slipped free.

At some time in the next few moments Gardiner thumped Mrs Mathewson, so the publican and his wife must have been relieved when their daughter banged on the door, and shouted she had brought a policeman. Mathewson opened the door, but was shoved to the floor as Gardiner’s companions began a rescue mission. Everybody rushed outside, with Gardiner’s friends threatening to kill the publican, but even so Gardiner was arrested and hustled into captivity. It seemed as if Wallace’s gang was effectively broken. Wallace was in jail, along with both the Shaw brothers, Alexander Gardiner, Gray, Scott, Ferguson and the two Stewarts. The war had been waged and the forces of the law, ragged and as yet unorganised, had been victorious.

It was 9th October before the trials were held, and that Thursday David Jobson of Haughhead, one of Dundee’s most eminent men, and David Blair of Pitpontie held the court in the Town House, the same building that contained the cells in which Dundee’s most infamous pests were held. After hearing of the reign of terror the Wallace gang had put Dundee through, the Justices of the Peace were not inclined to mercy.

James and John Shaw pleaded guilty to committing assaults and riots in West Port and the Scouringburn; both were banished from Forfarshire for five years. If they were found in the county in that time they would spend three months in the cells on bread and water. The Shaws listened impassively, showing no emotion as their fate was read out to them. Exile was no light punishment, for it meant separation from friends and family and could mean destitution and the life of a beggar, for who would employ a banished stranger? As it happened John Shaw paid so little heed to the sentence that he was back in Dundee by the weekend, and got three months on bread and water for his trouble.

Scott and Gray were handed the same sentence and bore the disgrace with the same lack of fear. As they left the court they exchanged cheerful greetings with Alexander Gardiner, much to the chagrin of the massed ranks of the respectable, who hoped for repentance or, even better, dismay at the severity of the sentence. Gardiner, now twenty-three and described as a ‘stout-looking fellow’ was more inclined to complain than to cringe before the majesty of the court. When details of his scrimmage at the Mathewson’s pub were read to him, he did not deny anything, but stated he had been kept in irons before the trial. In return he was reminded that he had already tried to escape from the authorities, and he was told he would remain in jail and in irons until the Circuit Court in Perth.

If the authorities had thought about it, they might have considered putting extra guards on Dundee’s most daring criminals, but by the time they realised their fault it was too late. Once confined in the upper storey of the jail, the members of Wallace’s gang, together with the other assorted riff-raff of the town, contrived their escape. While Gardiner and a notorious thief named Rose Bruce industriously spun yarn, it was Ferguson who discovered that the wall of their cell was merely lathe and plaster. He hacked his way through without much difficulty to find himself in the upper lobby of the jail. There was nobody on watch, the jailer lived in Castle Street and the watchman remained in the guardroom as Ferguson casually lifted the keys from their resting place and opened the cell doors. It was the work of a triumphant moment to release Gardiner from the fetters that held his feet and then all they had to do was leave the building.

There were seven prisoners in this Dundonian version of the Great Escape: Ferguson and Rose Bruce, John Shaw and Alexander Gardiner, David Scott and two women, Robertson and Thomson, who had been imprisoned for returning to the town despite being outlawed. In the early hours of an October Sunday, while the good people of Dundee were still asleep, they entered the Town House jail kitchen, opened the window and, tying rope to the restraining bars, lowered themselves to the ground. However, things now began to go wrong.

Word of the intended escape must have leaked, for the turnkey saw the mother and sister of one of the prisoners lounging at the back of the jail and chased them away with insults and dire threats. Duty done, he retired to the guardhouse, from where he heard a scuffling noise that must have been the prisoners working their way down the wall. By the time he left his chair and peeped outside, most of the prisoners had vanished into the tangle of closes behind the jail, one was lying on the ground in obvious pain and another was by her side.

Robertson had slipped from the rope while descending the wall and had fallen heavily, and her companion Thomson had remained by her side, preferring loyalty to her friend than freedom with a guilty conscience. In the twenty minutes it took Charles Watson the jailer to come after being summoned from Castle Street, all the other escapees had vanished.

Having gone to so much trouble in capturing the wild young men of Wallace’s gang the first time, the authorities had no intention of allowing them to escape. Town officers were sent to scour the streets, an express was sent on a fast horse to Patrick Mackay who was in Forfar, and everybody was put on alert for a sighting of the outlaws.

Almost immediately there were results. William Clark, one of Dundee’s town officers, traced Scott and Gardiner to Tealing, a tiny village a few miles to the north, and arrested them before twelve o’clock the next day. In the meantime, Patrick Mackay was in pursuit of the others. After riding through Angus and eastern Perthshire, he found traces of his quarry and followed the trail to the west, asking questions, offering descriptions and using all the power of his official position to catch the escapees.