A Sink of Atrocity: Crime in 19th-Century Dundee (23 page)

They paid a call to his lodgings in Dundee and were not overly surprised to find him not at home. They made enquiries, and found he had been absent on the previous Tuesday night as well, which was what they had suspected and, probably, hoped for. Now that their suspicions were justified, all they had to do was find him. Whatever his skills as a poacher and his ability to plan and execute a clever robbery, Robertson was less adept at hiding his success. A few more enquiries and the police knew he had been back in Dundee on the Wednesday, but by the Friday had left. They followed the paper trail to Forfar and toured the public houses.

On Friday evening the police found their man. Rather than hiding in some obscure corner or skulking in disguise, James Robertson was in a Forfar public house, drinking with a fine set of poachers and local ne’er-do-wells. While other men might have tried to blend in and look inconspicuous, Robertson had donned full Highland dress, with rings gleaming on his fingers, pins on his plaid and a silver-mounted sporran. Like a true Highland warrior, he fought back hard when the police moved in, but he was outnumbered and overpowered. While some of the police dragged his battered body to the police office, others searched the area where he had been sitting. It did not take long to find Playfair’s gold watch beneath Robertson’s chair, and someone in the pub told them he had been showing it off to his comrades.

With such damning evidence and a history of poaching and trespassing, there was little doubt that Robertson was guilty. The judge gave him five years, and it is unlikely that many people in Forfarshire really regretted his absence. He was certainly a colourful character, but unlike Robin Hood, he spent the proceeds of his robberies on himself, not on helping the poor.

Although the Victorian apprehension of youth crime is mirrored in today’s society, children were every bit as likely to be victims as perpetrators. While some crimes, such as computer hacking or witchcraft, are period-specific, others are common to every era. Some criminals may invoke sympathy, particularly when the passage of time paints a gloss of romance over what was probably a pretty sordid reality, but others have always been seen only as vile. Child abuse of any type is arguably one of the most heinous possible crime and one which seems to have been relatively uncommon, or at least seldom reported, in Dundee. However, in 1880 there was one particularly shocking case, made worse by the fact that the abuser was also the child’s mother.

Mary Ann Henderson was a twenty-six-year-old widow. She had been married to Thomas Henderson, a labourer, but he had died when she was only nineteen, leaving her with a one-year-old daughter, also named Mary Ann. Like so many desperate young mothers before and since, Mrs Henderson turned to her mother for help, and she, Mary Ann Hutton, took in the child. That situation lasted for six years, with young Mary Ann Henderson living with her grandparents in Milnathort, Kinross-shire, and her mother elsewhere. It must have come as a shock to the child when her mother took her back and, after a short spell in Milnathort, relocated to Dundee. By that time young Mary Ann was already deteriorating, with sores breaking out on her body, and the change from a small town to a bustling, busy industrial centre must have been incredibly traumatic for her.

However, things were about to get worse. About three years before, Mrs Henderson had had a romantic fling that left her pregnant, so in 1880 she had two children to care for. There was Mary Ann Henderson, now aged eight, and a toddling two-year-old. For some reason, Mary Ann Henderson took a dislike to the daughter she barely knew, and nearly as soon as they arrived in Dundee, she began to treat her with abominable cruelty. It was not difficult for a young, active woman to find work in Dundee in the 1880s, and when Mrs Henderson was not working at one of the many mills, she was busily sewing sacks at home.

Nobody will ever know exactly when the beatings began, but in April 1880, when Mrs Henderson and her children lived in Session Street, she attacked young Mary Ann with a broom and a leather belt, striking her on the head, back, arms and other places. Catherine Murray, who worked in a mill, lodged beside the Henderson family, and witnessed the cruelty. She saw how well the little girl looked after the toddler, made herself busy about the house and sometimes sewed sacks to bring in some money, but nothing she did could please her mother.

When the case eventually came to court, Catherine Murray described how Mrs Henderson called her daughter horrible names and said she did not like her. Even when Murray asked, Mrs Henderson did not say why she disliked her daughter, but used the heavy navvy’s belt whenever the inclination took her.

In May of that year Murray accompanied the family when they moved to a house in St Peter Street and the beatings continued. As well as striking her with a broom and a leather belt, Mary Ann also knocked down and kicked her daughter. On one horrific occasion she stripped the girl naked and tied her to a bed before slapping and striking her with her hands. Tiring of this, Mrs Henderson whipped the underweight, sickly child with a rope’s end, leaving her bruised, wealed and bleeding.

‘I do not care,’ Mrs Henderson said, ‘if the child is dead.’

Living in the house next door, Mrs McGee said she saw Mrs Henderson beating Mary Ann with a besom, knocking her down and kicking her when she was on the ground. She also said that the child was kept constantly busy sewing sacks and if she ever looked up she was ‘sure of a leathering’.

All Catherine Murray’s attempts to intervene were fruitless; she could do nothing to protect young Mary Ann. According to Murray, the beatings took place mainly at night when the neighbours were in bed, and without any reason. Murray also said that Mrs Henderson was a very passionate woman who disliked everybody and who certainly never listened to the opinion or advice of others.

By August they lived in Miller’s Land, Mid Wynd, and things continued as before, except now Mrs Henderson added a poker to her arsenal, striking Mary Ann on the head. Murray had moved out. Mrs Samson, who lived next door, knew everything that occurred as the wall between the two houses was so thin that, in her own words, she ‘could hear the sound of a thread being pulled through a sack’. She said she heard young Mrs Henderson ‘skelping’ Mary Ann ‘nearly every hour of the day’. When Mrs Samson tried to protect the girl, Mrs Henderson said she had a ‘right to do what she liked’ with her own child and anyway, ‘she didna sew enough sacks’. Mrs Samson also thought Mary Ann had caused no offence.

Martin Hogan, another neighbour, said the opposite. Backed by his wife, he said he had never heard any noises from the Henderson household and to them the child looked perfectly all right.

The assaults continued until 11th November when Murray happened to meet young Mary Ann in the street. The child’s face and head were cut and she was in such a pitiable state that Murray could not stand by and do nothing. Taking Mary Ann away from her mother, she looked after the child for a few days, contacted her grandmother and packed her off to Milnathort. Although beating children was the norm in the nineteenth century and Dundee was as hard and violent an industrial town as any, there was also a streak of genuine kindness that burst through at unexpected moments.

When the case came to the Sheriff Criminal Court Mrs Henderson pleaded not guilty, so everybody concerned, including the beleaguered child, had to appear.

Dr Pirie, who had examined Mary Ann, confirmed her body was covered in bruises, caused either by somebody’s hand or some other blunt instrument. Her arm was in a particularly damaged state so she had to support it by a sling. The doctor thought the girl had been subjected to violence for a long time. However, Mrs Henderson said she hit her daughter because she stole things from a shop, spoke back to her and threw a sack at her.

Young Mary Ann still had a bandage around her head where her mother had struck her with a poker. Not surprisingly, she was extremely nervous when faced with an array of adult authority, but the sheriff proved his compassion by asking the child’s grandmother to comfort her in the witness room. Only when Mary Ann was more controlled did he put her through the ordeal of answering questions.

Young Mary Ann’s version of events did not differ much from that presented by the adults. She said her mother took her from her grandmother, moving first to Leith and then to Dundee. Her life was spent looking after the ‘bairn’, sewing sacks and being attacked by her mother who ‘was aye bad to her’. Mary Ann had learned not to cry, for that just encouraged her mother to more violence. Despite what her mother claimed, she said she never threw a sack at her and never stole anything from a shop. The court must have been very quiet when the eight-year-old told the sheriff that her mother said she did not like her and said, chillingly, she would ‘cut her up and get her out of the road’.

Once Mary Ann had given her evidence the sheriff again showed kindness, asking the grandmother to take her home. The child was not to be in the court when the verdict was given. She was no longer to face the woman who had abused her.

The jury had no doubt about Mrs Henderson’s guilt, and the sheriff sent her to jail for a full fifteen months. To young Mary Ann, however, the best result must have been the sheer relief at being back with her grandmother.

Mary Ann Henderson’s case was disturbing enough, but at least it had a fairly satisfactory ending, at least for her. Elizabeth or Lizzie Urquhart, two years old and even more helpless, was not so fortunate. On Sunday 25th February 1883 her naked body was found stone dead in a tenement flat in Hilltown, murdered by her father.

David Urquhart lived in a two-storey tenement a stone’s throw from Victoria Road. The building stood alone, hidden by those that front Hilltown and with only a single road passing it, on its way to a contractor’s stable. The memory is long gone now, swept away within a half-forgotten improvement scheme but even in Urquhart’s time it was a place of dilapidation and decay, the resort of the despairing and defeated. Here, in an attic virtually bare of furniture, Urquhart and Isabella Meffan lived as man and wife and brought up their three children. There was Davida, aged four, Elizabeth or Lizzie, aged two and the twelve-month-old Alexander.

It was about August 1882 when the Urquhart family arrived in Hilltown. Urquhart was a labourer, seldom in regular employment, working when there was work, or whenever the mood took him. Isabella Meffan, known as Mrs Urquhart, was a spinner, and on the occasion when both were at work the children were locked in the attic and left to their own devices. That suggests that there was no family to help or to witness anything that occurred in the house.

Urquhart was about thirty-three years old. He was an Arbroath man, straight-backed, about five foot nine with brown hair, a moustache and a small scar between his eyebrows. A member of the Forfar and Kincardine Militia, he habitually wore a dark silk cap, a dark brown coat out at the elbows, white moleskin trousers, brown shirt and militia boots. In 1880 he spent eight months in Perth Jail for assault, but a week before the murder he had been labouring at the docks.

The neighbours knew the Urquharts as an unhappy couple who argued a lot, while Urquhart showed no kindness toward his children and was said to be especially cruel to his two-year-old daughter, Lizzie. Only a few weeks before he had struck her so severely that her arm was sore days later. He was also found bathing her in water so hot that she screamed. At some earlier period Davida also suffered a broken arm. Urquhart had other punishments for his children, including making young Lizzie walk up and down the room carrying half a brick because he caught her licking jelly.

On the Saturday evening, Urquhart came home about half-past seven. He was at least partly drunk. His wife and children were sitting on the floor, for there was not even a stool in the house, and no fire. February in Dundee can be cold, and an attic flat with neither insulation nor heating is an uncomfortable place at best, but rather than coal, clothing or firewood, Urquhart had bought a bottle of whisky. He shared the whisky with his wife, allowing her three nips, and then they began to argue.

As so often when drink was involved, the argument became heated and Mrs Urquhart ran from her violent husband. Obviously terrified, she jumped over the banisters of the stair, landed on the landing eight feet below and fled to her friend Mrs Cleary for sanctuary. Urquhart watched her go and returned inside, slamming the door emphatically.

There were sundry bangs and noises from the flat for a few moments, as if Urquhart was chopping wood, and shortly after he came knocking at Mrs Cleary’s door.

Mrs Urquhart, who had been sitting at the fire nursing a sore head and moaning, was scared, so Mrs Cleary hid her in a closet, but Urquhart only borrowed the key for the well outside, filled a pail with water and returned the key with a polite ‘Thank you’. About ten that night Mrs Urquhart asked Bridget Mulraney, Mrs Cleary’s sister-in-law who lived in the same house, to go upstairs for the coal pock. She obliged, but the house was in darkness with not even a fire to give light. Urquhart told her shortly there was no pock. Hearing the baby cry, Bridget asked,‘What’s wrong with the bairn?’

‘It’s hungry,’ Urquhart told her, and asked, ‘Where’s Isa?’

‘I don’t know,’ Bridget said.

‘You know brawly where she is,’ Urquhart said. With the house so dark, Bridget could not see him, but she heard his voice distinctly.

‘No,’ Bridget denied, obviously scared to tell him.

Her fear was justified by Urquhart’s next statement: ‘When I get her in the morning I’ll kick the belly out of her.’

Borrowing a basket from Mrs Cleary, Mrs Urquhart spent two pence on a basket of coal and left it at the door of her house. She did not go up alone, for Mrs Cleary accompanied either for physical or moral support, and a neighbour’s boy carried a lantern in the dark stair. The house door was locked so Mrs Urquhart left the basket outside and returned to Mrs Cleary’s house.