A Sink of Atrocity: Crime in 19th-Century Dundee (27 page)

‘Give the bugger law!’

Every city has some places that could have been made specifically for crime, and the Little Close in Dundee was one such. It ran between Blackness Road and the Hawkhill, a narrow, dark and airless passage, stifling hot in summer when flies feasted on the sundry dung heaps, slippery and chill in winter when fog and frost beset the traveller. At all seasons it was dark, and with so little elbow room that two people could not pass each other unless one pressed against the wall. About half-way down the close, the gable end of a single house formed part of the wall, and in here lived a family who terrorised the lane and the fear of whom deterred travellers from using this passageway unless in full daylight.

There were four of them: James Greig and his wife Helen, her brother James Nicoll and their sister Margaret Nicoll. Of them all, Margaret Nicoll was the worst. She was the mainspring of the group, a woman who constantly abused her neighbours with words or violence and who had appeared before the Police Court on a number of occasions. Yet although the Nicolls controlled the house, the Little Close and much of the neighbourhood, they did not own the house, nor were they even the tenants. Margaret Nicoll was the servant of the owner, an unmarried man who seemed not to care what she did, and she had brought in her relatives to rule her employer’s house. From that time onward Margaret Nicoll was the real Mistress of the house.

On Saturday 5th October 1833 John Murray, a rope maker, was walking along the Close when he heard Margaret’s voice. ‘Now, Greig, give the bugger law!’ and two people attacked him. It was half-past ten at night, and as dark and miserable as October can be, but Murray defended himself so effectively that he beat Greig off and even made Margaret back away.

‘It’s all a mistake,’ Margaret assured him, and offered to take Murray into her home to treat his wounds. More trusting than worldly, Murray agreed, and stepped inside the house, only to once again hear the words, ‘Give the bugger law’ and the whole pack of Nicolls attacked him. Helen Nicoll cracked him over the head with the large house key, temporarily dazing him. He struggled free, crashed against the gate, burst it open and fell into the Close, followed by the howling mob. When a man loomed through the dark, Murray must have felt some relief, but it was Greig returning and they grappled together, until another rush from the Nicolls pushed Murray back. For a moment he thought his life was in danger, with one of the assailants attempting to ‘Burke’ or smother him, and he was about to be overcome when another traveller, James Macintosh, appeared and piled in on his side. Between the two they rushed Greig and Helen Nicoll along the close and handed them to the police.

The next morning Greig made his confession and put all the blame on his sister-in-law, Margaret Nicoll. Both he and Helen were sent to jail for sixty days and the police made a quick raid on the Nicolls’ house, arresting Margaret as she worked in the garden. Her arrest was something of a public spectacle, as all her neighbours turned out to watch, together with many of the decent people of the Hawkhill and Overgate who had suffered at her tongue and hands. She was also given sixty days, which was the maximum the Police Court could impose. Bailie Christie also warned the police to keep a close eye on ‘that abominable establishment’ before somebody was murdered in the close.

When Lord Cockburn said, ‘What a set of she-devils were before us!’ he was referring to the Dundee women who were dragged, often kicking and swearing, before the bar of the Circuit Court. Margaret Nicoll was only one of a long line of Dundee women who were at least as dangerous as their menfolk, and they pepper the annals of nineteenth-century crime in the city. Often they took out their aggression on each other, as in the case of the face-to-face battle of two women at Dallfield Walk in April 1824, when one used a poker to batter her opponent into bloody submission. A similar case occurred in April 1830 when Elizabeth Savage attacked Rose Montgomery in her house in the Hawkhill. In this instance the women had shared a single man, and when he chose to marry Montgomery, Savage lived up to her name and responded by attacking her rival. When this case came to court, Montgomery shouted at her ex-lover, calling him a ‘jackdaw’ and vowing to torment him at every opportunity. She was still screaming and threatening when she was dragged away to the cells.

Elizabeth Savage had some justification for her assault, as her trust had been abused and her man stolen from her, but in the case of Williamina Thomson, the only reason was theft. Thomson was a young woman, still in her teens, and on 16th June 1878 she ambushed Ann Banks. Mrs Banks was a much older woman, perhaps in her fifties, and she was walking through Watson’s Lane in the early hours of the morning when Thomson came up from behind her and asked if she knew a good place for a dram. When Mrs Banks said she did not know, Thomson put an arm around her neck and wrestled her to the ground. Kneeling on her breast, Thomson slapped Mrs Banks’ face and rifled her pockets. The spoil was really not worth the effort: three farthings, a snuff box and a small bottle with a gill of whisky. When Mrs Banks screamed for help, a flax dresser named Charles Lamb ran up and demanded to know what was happening.

‘Come, come,’ Lamb said. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Mannie,’ Thomson said. ‘It’s my mother, and I’ll learn her not to go about and spend my money!’ She explained that her mother had gone off with her father’s wages and there was no food left in the house.

Lamb nodded. It was not an uncommon situation for a wife to squander her man’s wages on drink and he had no intention of interfering in a domestic squabble. He left, and as soon as the echoes of his feet faded, Thomson rolled off her victim, landed a hefty kick and told her to go home.

Thomson was not the cleverest of thieves. After her failure to steal a respectable haul, she remained in the same area, so when Mrs Banks complained to the police, Thomson was arrested and hauled into the police office. As well as Charles Lamb, a weaver named Elizabeth Kennedy had witnessed the assault, and when her case came to trial in September 1878, Lord Mure sent Thomson to jail for eighteen months.

Sometimes women banded together and hunted in pairs. Such an occasion occurred at the end of August 1837 when Ann Smith and Ann Craig assaulted Agnes Stewart and Euphemia Menzies in Dudhope Crescent and tore their clothes to shreds. It was also known for one woman to attack two or more, which is what happened in April 1884 in one of Dundee’s less than salubrious lodging houses. These places were for the poor, the dispossessed, desperate travellers and those without hope. Anybody who used a lodging house would not expect luxury, while even comfort and cleanliness would be an unexpected bonus. However, lodging houses did offer shelter from the worst of the weather, they provided some sort of a bed and maybe a fire and the lodgers would hope to spend the night without being assaulted. Sometimes all these comforts were not received.

At about one in the morning Sunday 21st April 1884 the Gillespie family knocked on the door of Catherine Falconer’s Lodging House. There were four Gillespies: Mr and Mrs Gillespie and their two children, and Catherine Falconer showed them into a double-bedded room. There was already another couple in the room, with Mr Jones, an Englishman, lying in bed and his young wife undressed, and sitting beside the fire. Within a few moments the two wives had fallen out, and with Mrs Jones being drunk and aggressive, the argument escalated into a full-scale fight. T

he Englishwoman jumped at Mrs Gillespie, knocked her down, grabbed her hair with both hands and began to bite into her shoulders and back, screaming, ‘I’ll eat you alive!’

The two husbands tried to haul Mrs Jones from her prey, but without any success, and Gillespie ran downstairs to fetch the landlady, who appeared with a servant named McCauley. Between the four of them they dragged the drunken Englishwoman from Mrs Gillespie. Mrs Falconer told McCauley to find out the cause and end the dispute, but Mrs Jones was still agitated and, grabbing a poker, she attacked the inoffensive servant. After that, the police were called and the cursing, near-demented Englishwoman was dragged to the police station. She was fined 30/- with an alternative of fifteen days in the jail.

Women did not just confine their aggression to other women. They also attacked men. Sometimes they followed the example of Mrs Jones and used a poker, as Hopeton Watt of Peter Street did in February 1843 when she attacked the starcher John Robertson. At other times they did not have to use anything at all, as in the case of Janet Miller of Scott’s Close in March 1879. She had met James Peebles, a labourer, in a Fish Street pub, but their conversation soon became an argument and Peebles left. Miller was not keen to let him off so easily. She followed him into an eating-house and attacked him, punching furiously so he staggered out of the shop into the street and fell in the gutter, where she kicked him savagely as he lay helpless. The Police Court gave her ten days in jail to think about her exploits. Sometimes women used whatever was in their hand, as in the case of millworker Jane Hall of Rosebank Road who attacked two seamen, James Connel and Charles McKenzie, with a tin flagon. She hit them both on the head or the face and then, to finish off her day, smashed a window in Cochrane Street. When her trial came, she pleaded guilty, but said she was so drunk she could not remember a thing. She was fined £1.

Sometimes a girl attacked a boy by mistake, as in September 1883 when Betsy Steel from Union Street in Maxwelltown visited the theatre in the old cattle market. Her mother had warned her not to go to such places, but Betsy thought she could look after herself. She took her knitting with her, so she did not completely waste her time. As she was watching the performance a girl in the row behind her repeatedly pulled her hair. Eventually Betsy lost her temper, pulled out the needle from her knitting and thrust it toward the annoying girl. Unfortunately she missed and hit a completely innocent boy instead, nearly taking his eye out. The case went to the Police Court and Betsy was only admonished, but her mother promised ‘to take care of her’, which sounded very much like a threat.

On other occasions, the woman knew exactly what she was doing and attacked a man with cold-blooded efficiency. On the night of 12th August 1874 Mary Webster acted in such a manner when she attacked and robbed the auctioneer Charles Grant in St Andrews Street. Charles Grant really knew little about it. He was on his way home to Seagate when somebody came up behind him, cracked him over the head and knocked him into the gutter. A Good Samaritan found him there and took him home, and only then did he realise he had been robbed of a gold watch and chain.

As in so many of these cases, there was a witness. Elizabeth Soutar of St Andrews Street had been in her house about eleven in the evening when she heard a sound like somebody falling down. When she looked out of her ground floor window she saw a man lying on the ground and Mary Webster loosening his clothes. Webster looked up, saw Soutar and said Grant had fallen as she was passing, and then she walked away. However, she returned in a few minutes and stole Grant’s watch, with Soutar still watching.

There was even more damning, if slightly contradictory, evidence from the local beat policeman. Constable Robertson saw Webster slide between Grant and the wall of the street, knock him down with a single blow behind the left ear and then bend over him as he sprawled on the ground. When Robertson shouted, Webster ran, but the policeman was the faster and caught her with Grant’s watch chain held tightly in her hand and his watch in her pocket. Once she was caught, Webster pleaded for the mercy she had not herself shown, asking him to release her for she might be charged with murder, but once Robertson had checked on Grant’s condition and sent a messenger to fetch Mrs Grant, he wrestled Webster to the police office. Once she was taken inside, she swore and shouted at the police officers.

The jury had little doubt as to Webster’s guilt and Lord Ardmillan sentenced her to eighteen months in jail. At least in her case the victim, innocent as he was, survived to complain about the assault. On some occasions a man died at the hands of Dundee’s dangerous women.

Mary Ann Stirling was no different from hundreds of other Dundee women. Hard-working, she lived with a man to whom she was not married, and who liked his drink. On Sunday 16th April 1876 her man, John McCartney, a marble polisher, came home more than a little drunk and hauled her out of bed. Not surprisingly, the couple began to quarrel. The words grew more heated, they shoved each other and McCartney punched Stirling in the face. She fell back, her nose bleeding. Rather than cower or plead, Stirling lifted a brick and smashed him over the head, finishing off the job with an axe, or so the prosecution alleged. She denied that, saying that the brick had been enough. And it had, for McCartney’s skull was fractured, and although he was rushed to the infirmary, he died six days later.

In her defence, Stirling explained that it had been dark; McCartney often hit her when he was drunk and she had been afraid he might go too far. In the event, it had been she who had overstepped the mark. At the Circuit Court Lord Young showed surprising leniency, giving her only six months, and as she had been in jail nearly that length of time awaiting trial, she was soon back out on the streets.

Much more premeditated was the case of Helen Morrison and Ann McGuire. These two did not act in sudden anger or out of self-defence, or through drink, but were cold criminals. On 20th October 1879, when Mary McLauchlan was working in a mill, Helen Morrison forced open the locked door of her house at Blackscroft and stole a pair of boots and a shawl. She would probably have taken more, but millworkers did not have much to steal. On the same day, about one in the afternoon and along with the equally unpleasant Ann McGuire, Morrison waited near the Sawmill Gate of Camperdown on the turnpike road from Dundee to Coupar Angus. As Mary Anderson, a seventy-year-old widow walked past on her way to Lochee from her home in Woodside Cottage, Birkhill, they jumped on her, grabbed her neck and threw her to the ground. As Mrs Anderson lay there confused and helpless, Morrison and McGuire knelt on top of her, punched her in the face and chest and stole her purse with a little over sixteen shillings in silver and copper.