A Sink of Atrocity: Crime in 19th-Century Dundee (29 page)

The jury found Gow not guilty of attacking young Robert but guilty of assaulting his mother, and Sheriff Smith gave her thirty days above the five months she had already spent in jail.

‘Thank you, My Lord,’ Gow said politely. ‘Thank you, gentlemen.’

But in January 1870, liberated again, Gow was found drunk in Powrie Lane and had her 197th appearance in court. She was back in jail in March for another ten days, marked up her 200th appearance in May with another two days, when the police thought she was ‘using most disgusting language’, and returned again in June for a breach of the peace in the Greenmarket, when Bailie Nicol gave her sixty days.

She was hardly out when she got drunk in the Scouringburn and appeared before Bailie Cox, who let her off on condition she signed the pledge. However Gow made her 205th appearance in December 1870 and her 218th in September 1872. Once again she was charged with disorderly behaviour, leaving her barrow in the Scouringburn while she toured the pubs, danced, sang and jumped about, to the entertainment of a gathered crowd. Despite police warnings to move, her capers continued, and despite her plausible explanations to the bench Bailie Maxwell gave her thirty days.

‘Oh, sir,’ said Mag Gow in real or pretended horror. ‘Thirty days, thirty days! Oh dear.’

Exactly the same behaviour in Polepark Road in March 1873 saw her in jail for forty days, despite her story of a group of men robbing her. In June she was back for another sixty days for disorderly conduct and breach of the peace in the Overgate. She was out for a few hours and bounced back like a drink-sodden yo-yo, with thirty days and a promise to join the Good Templars. Next month it was the same story and another sixty days for disorderly conduct in Forebank Road and Ann Street.

The years rolled on and Mag Gow continued her descent. November 1874: sixty days for breach of the peace in the Greenmarket. February 1875: sixty days for cursing and swearing in St Margaret’s Close. April 1875: sixty days for breach of the peace in the Overgate. She was out for a day and back in for breach of the peace in Tyndals Wynd: sixty days. She was given another sixty days in September; sixty more in January and the same in April, July, September and November.

By November 1877 Gow had made over 250 court appearances but when she appeared before Bailie Robertson that month she was obviously unwell and rather than sending her back to jail, the bailie ordered a doctor examine her. Doctors Pirie and Miller did so and said, not surprisingly, that she had signs of mental aberration. This time the heavy doors that banged shut on her were those of the lunatic ward of the Dundee Poorhouse.

Nevertheless, Margaret Gow still managed to re-enter the public eye. In July 1878 both wards of the poorhouse were taken on an excursion to Perth. As they walked in procession to Craig Pier and the packet boat, crowds gathered to see the famous Mag Gow, with the brave thrusting out to shake her hand or give her money. Sensible of the possibility of disorder, the police called a cab and placed her inside. As so often before, a gaggle of boys followed, cheering. Gow’s last appearance was in 1885 when the poorhouse allowed her a day’s liberty, but she was unable to restrain her old impulses and drank herself into a stupor.

Margaret Gow was only one of a huge number of people in Dundee to whom drinking was a way of life so, naturally, much of Dundee’s petty crime centred on the public houses. There were probably hundreds if not thousands of instances throughout the nineteenth century, but most followed the same sordid pattern of ordinary people causing trouble through drink. For example there was a brawl in a pub in the Overgate on Sunday 17th September 1821. When the town officers arrived they found most of the combatants were women and arrested four sorry-looking specimens, heavily marked with the bruises and cuts of battle.

Drunkenness was prevalent throughout the century, but the 1820s seem to have been particularly bad. For example, one week in June 1824 a group of drunkards wrecked a Hilltown pub while five drunks destroyed another pub in the Nethergate. In November that same year William Shand was fined for causing trouble in a pub and on the same day the Excise Court was crowded with people charged for selling whisky and ale without a licence. Even worse was the number of people who infested the town selling what they claimed was smuggled brandy and whisky but was in reality a compound so vicious it could literally kill the drinker.

In late summer 1841 the Superintendent of police ordered that all pubs should be empty by twelve at night, which was another step toward a more regulated system. Many publicans, not surprisingly, disagreed. Some young gentlemen thought it daring to visit the mildly dangerous pubs of Dundee’s less savoury areas, but not all came away unscathed. In April 1843 two gentlemen spent some time in the Red Lion, one of the Overgate’s less appealing places of refreshment. The men regretted their daring shortly after when a couple of local ladies robbed them of most of their money. That same year there were 500 places in Dundee where drink could be bought and some councillors hoped to cut that number by half.

Lord Cockburn had commented on the behaviour of Dundee women, and some of the Police Court figures bear this out. For example, in Bailie Moyes’ first appearance as a judge in the Police Court in December 1843, seventeen of the twenty-seven people who appeared before him were women and most were accused of drunkenness and riotous behaviour.

Sometimes the publican was heavily involved in the trouble, as in November 1845 when Patrick Devlin was playing cards with a weaver called Taggart in Devlin’s Overgate pub. They argued, Develin first ejected him then attacked him in the street. He was promptly arrested. When the case came to the Police Court, Develin was fined but vanished before the fine was paid, so his licence was revoked.

By the 1850s the laws against unlicensed public houses were being tightened. Known colloquially as ‘cheeping shops’, or more commonly as shebeens, these places were scattered throughout the town; they often sold raw illegal whisky, often caused a disturbance to the immediate neighbourhood and cost the town valuable revenue. In order to end this practice, the finance committee of the Dundee Police Commission paid women 2/6d to find the cheeping houses and act as a witnesses when the case came to court. Bailie Spankie and Bailie Jobson disagreed with this procedure, with Jobson saying that only the lowest type of women would take such a position.

With spies and entrapment not popular the courts tried other methods to stem the tide of drunkenness. In January 1861 Margaret Downfield from the Overgate pleaded guilty to being drunk on the Sabbath. When she said she had abstained for the past fourteen months, Bailie Ower set her free on the condition she took the pledge of total abstinence. To ensure Downfield kept her word, the Bailie handed her to Mr McLean the Temperance Missionary.

Despite numerous Acts of Parliament, drink remained a major problem in Dundee, as in most places in nineteenth-century Britain. The police and courts continued to hunt for shebeens, which, if anything, increased after the 1859 Forbes Mackenzie Act that furthered official control of public houses. During the 1860s Dundee held special courts purely for shebeens. In one court held in May 1861 Margaret Gilbert, Jane Morris, Mrs Low and Harriet Macdonald were jailed for six weeks for having a shebeen in their Peter Street house, while Peter Bock and Ann Lindsay of Fish Street, Henry Coleman and Catherine Crow of Pullar’s Close, Murraygate, Lewis and Bridget Devlin of Chapelshade and Mary Brymer of Seagate were fined £7 each. In June 1863 Isabella Forbes or Smith was given six months or a £30 fine for having a brothel and shebeen in Couttie’s Wynd.

The Public House Act of 1862 did not alter the opening hours for public houses, but restricted hotels to only serving drink to genuine travellers on Sundays. The police were given new powers that allowed them to enter any premises purely on the suspicion they may sell alcohol. A fine of 40/- or two days in jail could be imposed on anybody who refused to leave a pub when the police ordered, and a 5/- fine or 24 days in jail for anybody found drunk.

In the Police Court held on 8th May 1883 a carter named Francis Johnston and his wife Bridget pleaded guilty to selling whisky without a licence from their house in Miller’s Pend. Bailie Bradford fined them £7. The following month Francis Reilly senior from Horsewater Wynd was charged with the same offence, but many people in Dundee in the late 1880s knew that the largest shebeen in Dundee sheltered behind a facade of respectability; the Kincardine Literary Club hid many secrets. In 1885 Dundee had 448 premises licensed to sell alcohol, with 229 pubs, 211 licensed grocers and eight hotels. There was also Ballingall’s Brewery at the Pleasance and the Albert Hotel and Brewery. Some of these establishments could bear comparison with anywhere in the country and many were filled with character. Russell’s Royal Hotel in Union Street had been upgraded in mid-century and boasted the best billiard room and smoking room in Scotland. The Eagle Inn, opposite Horse Wynd at 42 Murraygate was a coaching and a carrier inn, while the John o’ Groats at the Cowgate had the alternative name of Heaven and Hell. It stood at the corner of St Roques’s Lane and was situated immediately below the Wishart Memorial Church. Yet despite all the efforts of government and the police, the Dundee drinking culture continued to blight the lives of far too many of the citizens. Drink and crime marched hand in hand through the streets of the industrial city.

The bonnet came first, flipping from the window to land on the bottom step of the Bell Street close. The crutch came next, clattering down the common stair to rest accusingly on the cobbles. Finally the owner appeared, yelling as his wife, Margaret Finlay, helped him out of his house and down the stairs to the street below by hauling him by the hair of his head.

Husband beating was not uncommon in nineteenth-century Dundee. In this case in March 1866, Mrs Findlay had accused her husband of being too friendly with other women. He had slapped her for her suspicions and she had retaliated with interest. The bailie at the Police Court found her guilty of assault, said her conduct was ‘very unbecoming, especially as her husband was a cripple’ and gave her five days in jail or a five shilling fine to help her mend her ways.

Perhaps spouse beating is one of the hidden crimes; for once a man and a woman enter a marriage they retreat behind the curtain of matrimony. Nobody except themselves knows the full truth of their lives, or the pressures and tensions that cause a union, once based on mutual affection, turn to anger and violence. Having said that, there were few secrets in nineteenth-century Dundee with the majority of its citizens living in overcrowded tenements separated from their neighbours only by a thin partition wall. People knew if a marriage was troubled by the voices coming from next door, and in a town of one- and two-roomed houses, disagreements that started inside were often continued in the common close or in the street outside.

Sometimes arguments were very public indeed, and it is difficult to feel anything but sympathy for the individual in the dock. In August 1893 Helen Hackney of Gray’s Square, Hospital Wynd, stood accused of assaulting her husband Charles and another man named Edward Quin. When Mrs Hackney appeared in court she was described as a ‘slatternly looking woman with a voluble tongue’ and it seemed that it was to this tongue that her husband most objected. As she stood facing the judge at the Police Court, she called her husband an ‘outlaw’.

As the couple were questioned, some of their story emerged. There was a history of unhappiness in the marriage, with years of bickering. On this occasion Helen had attacked Hackney, so he pushed her outside, whereupon she struck both him and Quin with a key. Hackney said she ‘annoyed’ him wherever he went, and because of her he had already been imprisoned for fourteen days.

At that point Mrs Hackney proved the power of her tongue by screaming the fourteen days in jail were for deserting his children to live with another woman in Monifieth, and now he was not only living with another woman, but she had eight children. It is not difficult to imagine Mrs Hackney’s anger as she loudly informed the judge, the court and the world at large that her husband had also taken their two children to a ‘bad house’ from a Thursday night to a Saturday and he was keeping low company with the even ‘bigger blackguard’ Edward Quin.

Uncaring of her audience, Mrs Hackney continued to scold when Quin was called upon to give evidence. She finished her work by telling him to go and get a job. ‘You cannae work and you winnae work. Go awa’, ye scoondril!’

When all the evidence was completed, the Bailie obviously sympathised with the bitter-tongued but obviously hard-used Mrs Hackney and only admonished her.

Although Dundee women were more than capable of standing up for themselves, most cases of domestic abuse concerned husbands assaulting their wives. Sometimes the end result was tragic. By February 1870 Charles Taws already had two convictions for assault but his third and last was his worst. He came home to his house in James Street, Maxwelltown, punched his wife, burned her face with a candle and began kicking her about the body. She died nine days later but Taws only got five years’ penal servitude for assault. John McIntyre, a Dundee carpenter got seven years transportation at the Circuit Court at Perth in April 1836 when he kicked and punched his wife Allison, and dashed her against a wall. She died of her injuries.

Other cases were equally brutal but received more attention, possibly because they had elements of drama that was lacking in the sordid murders of Mrs Taws and Allison McIntyre. The attack on Julia Ann Hutcheson was one such.

Julia Ann had not long been married to the baker Robert Hutcheson when they moved into a top flat in Seagate. On Saturday 29th December 1883, eighteen months into their marriage, Robert Hutcheson got drunk, staggered up the four flights of stairs, charged into the house and began to shout at Julia Ann. After calling her every name he could think of, he told her he did not care if this was her last Saturday. He was obviously savagely angry and followed up his verbal assault by punching her face and head. Julia Ann backed away but Hutcheson kicked her legs, grabbed her by the throat and threw her to the ground. As she lay there, rolled into a ball for protection, Hutcheson picked up a washing board and cracked it against her back. Rather than lie still and be assaulted, Julia Ann struggled to her feet and ran to her neighbour, Thomas Rhynd.