A Sink of Atrocity: Crime in 19th-Century Dundee (7 page)

There is no knowing how Elizabeth Leggat acted when her husband was at sea, but when he was home she seemed hardly to have a life. Leggat controlled everything she did, and beat her if she did not obey. On one occasion she told her sister, Jessie Crichton, that Leggat had beaten her so badly she could barely walk. At times he had threatened to murder her, but nobody believed he would. The neighbours knew the marriage was not perfect – the internal walls of a Dundee tenement were too thin for secrecy – but there were many quarrelling couples in the city and few thought twice about it. Marriage, like life, was never easy in an industrial city and people preferred to close their ears, mind their own business and hope other people minded theirs.

Late on the morning of 7th December the couple fell out, and their raised voices echoed around the close. Mrs Kendall, in the house immediately below, had heard such things before, but at one in the afternoon there was something that momentarily startled her. It was a sound, she thought, ‘like the breaking of a bed’, but save for a brief, semi-humorous comment to a friend, ‘Is that somebody being killed?’, she pushed the incident to the back of her mind.

When Mrs Kendall heard somebody running down the common staircase she peeped outside her door and saw Leggat hurrying past. On a lower floor, Mrs Smith greeted Leggat with a cheery ‘Hello,’ but met with no response as he rushed outside into the dark winter street. Presumably both women gave a metaphorical shrug of their shoulders and returned to their homes. The police arrived a couple of hours later.

Until then only Richard Leggat knew what had happened. During the long months he was at sea, he was intensely aware that his young, attractive wife was alone. Leggat was a quiet man who did not join in the revelries of his comrades, and perhaps this solitariness enhanced his jealousy until it became an obsession. By the time he returned from the Arctic he was convinced that Elizabeth had been cheating on him, and he gave her dog’s abuse. Combined with the lack of money, Leggat’s suspicions must have unhinged his mind. Up in the ice, the Greenlandmen would hunt anything, from birds to polar bears to whales, so perhaps that is why Leggat owned a large, central fire revolver. He produced it as Elizabeth stood in front of him, taking a pinch of snuff. He shot five times, hitting her twice, with one shot going into her thigh and another straight through her heart.

There does not seem to have been any build-up to the murder, no more arguments than usual, but the neighbours beneath did hear loud noises. Afterwards Leggat placed the revolver on the dresser in the kitchen and left the house. His daughter lay in her bed, half naked and apparently undisturbed by the violence and the death of her mother.

Running down the stairs, Leggat walked straight to the harbour, climbed onto the West Protection Wall and jumped into the Tidal Basin in an attempt to commit suicide, but his instincts for life were stronger than either guilt or grief and he remained afloat. Some time before three in the afternoon he swam back ashore, walked to the Central Police Station in Bell Street and gave himself up. At first the police did not believe him. It was not common for a soaking wet man to arrive and confess to a murder, but they searched him, found a handful of revolver cartridges, and decided to act.

The arrival of Deputy Chief Constable Carmichael and Inspector Davidson with a gaggle of uniformed police alerted half the neighbourhood that something was amiss. People emerged from their homes and bustled to John Street, some hoping for scandal, others perhaps genuinely shocked. Searching the house, the police found the corpse of Elizabeth Leggat and her still unaware daughter. The police doctor, Charles Templeman, announced that Mrs Leggat was dead and her body was quickly taken to the Constitution Road Mortuary.

Leggat was as quiet and unassuming in custody as he had been on board a ship, but when he appeared at the Police Court he denied murder, claiming he remembered nothing until he came to his senses in the Tay. As he waited for his trial, his daughter was taken to the Children’s Shelter in Constitution Road. Possibly because of his plea of temporary insanity, Leggat was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to fifteen years’ penal servitude.

Murder, however, was uncommon among Dundee seamen. Assault, drunkenness and theft were much more likely. In one case in February 1824 three sailors arrived at an Overgate lodging house. They paid for a night’s board but when the owner slipped out for a few moments, one of the seamen began to search through all the drawers. The owner returned before anything was stolen but the man ran too quickly to be caught. The police found him later and dragged him to the police office, where he was strip-searched. Only then did they realise that he was actually a woman. When dealing with Dundee mariners, anything was possible!

At first sight, there seemed nothing out of the ordinary about Mary Sullivan. In common with many thousands of other Dundee women, she was over forty years old and worked in a textile mill. Although she was sometimes known as Mary Killen and lived in fair harmony with a man of that name, the two had never been married. Nevertheless they had acted as man and wife for years, so when Killen left her for another millworker named Margaret Page, it is not surprising that Sullivan was a little upset.

In such a case it would be expected for Sullivan to confront her man and tell him exactly what she thought of him. She might also have tried to win him back or challenged her rival for his affections, but instead she took more direct and more drastic action. Gathering a bundle of waste paper and a piece of a discarded willow basket, Mary Sullivan soaked them in paraffin. Sometime after dark on the night of Wednesday 29th July, she placed her bundle against the door of Page’s house in Lilybank Road, scratched a Lucifer match and set it alight. Within a few minutes the flames had spread to the door, burning through the wood and spiralling blue smoke inside the house. Fortunately for the occupants, and probably for Mary Sullivan, the flames spread only as far as the surrounding woodwork and nobody was hurt.

Sullivan never denied the act and within days she was in the Police Court, charged with wilful fire-raising. Bailie Doig thought a higher court would be more appropriate for such a serious accusation and in mid-September Sullivan appeared before Lord Craighall at the Circuit Court. Once again she pleaded guilty, so there was no need for a trial. Lord Craighall listened to the reasons for Sullivan’s actions and pointed out that the fire might have spread from Page’s house to others around, so putting others in great danger. He reminded her that the law considered fire-raising as a serious crime and sentenced her to twelve months’ imprisonment. He also said that Sullivan had ‘done it under the influence of passion’. That same passion was evident in some of the worst crimes in nineteenth-century Dundee.

However they are depicted on the television, murders are sordid affairs with nothing of romance or excitement about them. There is usually a lot of sympathy for the victim and occasionally a twinge for the perpetrator, but there was one case in Dundee where the murderer was viewed with pity by just about everybody. Even stranger, this was a domestic murder, where a husband killed his wife, but the murder of Margaret Balfour was unusual right from the start.

On the morning of 22nd December 1825 David Balfour, a seaman, and Thomas Houston, who worked for the Dundee & Perth Shipping Company, walked into Mr Dalgairny’s spirit shop at the Shore. After he had knocked back half a gill of whisky, Balfour told Houston he was determined to end things; he said he would put his wife away because he could not take any more, and he did not care if he hanged for it. With that the men parted and Balfour headed to the Fleshmarket. He may have intended to buy meat, but instead he borrowed a knife from one of the butchers, ‘to kill a lamb’. When the butcher asked him where the lamb was, Balfour told him it was in the Murraygate.

With the knife in his jacket, Balfour walked to his father-in-law’s house in the Murraygate. According to his own account, his wife, Margaret, was standing alone beside the kitchen fireside.

‘Margaret,’ Balfour said, ‘will you give me the shirt?’

‘Yes, yes you blackguard,’ Margaret replied.‘Do you want anything else?’ As she fetched a shirt from another room, she asked again, ‘Do you want anything else, you blackguard?’

‘Oh Margaret,’ Balfour said. ‘Margaret …’

Grabbing him by the shoulders, Margaret tried to push him out of the door, but Balfour drew the knife from within his jacket and stabbed her, there and then. Even as Margaret crumpled to the ground, Balfour left the house, but rather than try to escape from justice, he ran straight toward it. He walked the few dozen yards from his father-in-law’s house to the Town House, knocked politely at the door and when Charles Watson, the turnkey, answered, Balfour confessed he should be locked up; he had murdered his wife.

Even faced with such a confession, Charles Watson did not welcome Balfour into jail with open arms. Instead he said that the jailer was not there, but if Balfour could wait outside? Balfour did, kicking his heels around the Pillars and walking away the last hour of freedom he would ever know. Eventually John Watson the jailer appeared and ushered David Balfour safely into a cell.

That same morning Balfour wrote a confession that told his whole sad, sordid story. Like so many before him, Balfour had gone to sea as a young boy, and after four years, the Royal Navy pressed him. It was then 1801, the French Revolutionary War was at its height and Britain was struggling for her existence against a continent in arms. A few years later and still in the Navy, Balfour met Margaret. She was a Dundee girl, and her father worked in the Dundee Sugar House. She was very attractive, and he was a fit, virile young seaman. It is possible that Margaret was pregnant when they married in July 1805, and Balfour was very much in love, despite his more worldly-wise shipmates warning against her. Knowing women from a score of ports, they would recognise her type immediately.

However, Balfour was as brash and confident as any other seventeen-year-old boy and set up home with his new wife in the Seagate, no distance at all from the harbour of Dundee. Perhaps it was because of her that he deserted the Navy, but there is ambiguity over that period of his life. He certainly served in the Navy until 1813 when he was discharged with a pension, which for some unknown reason he claimed under the name of Mitchell. During that period Margaret picked up half his pay, as was customary with nearly every seaman’s wife – the Custom Records in Dundee are littered with such instances.

By that time the Balfours were considered an old married couple by nineteenth-century standards, but in David Balfour’s case, at least, the love survived. He seems to have been a decent, good-natured, hard-working man who did his best for his wife despite growing doubts about her fidelity. It was this good nature, combined with the wayward streak in Margaret, which was to begin the slide to murder. Perhaps David remembered the warnings of his shipmates before they married, but if so he tried to ignore them and remain faithful as they produced three children. Unfortunately only one boy survived.

Notwithstanding his troubles at home, it was not hard for a seaman in Dundee to find a berth, and once Balfour was back at sea Margaret took in a lodger, Alexander Hogg, to help with the bills.

Then Margaret’s brother, Robert Clark, needed money. He asked his father and Balfour to act as security, and in time the repayment was due. But as neither Robert nor his father had the wherewithal, Balfour became liable for the full amount. He did not have the money, but Margaret Balfour asked the lodger to help, and the difficulty eased. Nevertheless, there was a cloud to the silver lining, and Margaret and Hogg became more than friends.

With Balfour at sea much of the time, the relationship between Hogg and Margaret had taken root and Balfour found himself a stranger in his own house. He suggested that Margaret and he leave Dundee together, but when Margaret’s mother applied pressure for her to stay, Balfour moved out alone. For the next three years he lived in Aberdeen, where Margaret occasionally visited him, while Hogg moved in with Margaret’s parents. Eventually David and Margaret moved to Greenock together, with their surviving son and Margaret’s brother.

In Greenock the Balfours rented a house from a local inn-keeper, Torquil Macleod, who was a widower with a small boy. Margaret soon transferred her infidelity from Hogg to Macleod, and Balfour had renewed cause for jealousy. When he came home early from a voyage from Belfast, he found his house empty and it took little deduction to guess where Margaret was. Balfour waited outside Macleod’s house until two in the morning when he saw Margaret emerge. Naturally he confronted her, heard her admission of guilt and promptly forgave her, but it was obvious they could not stay in Greenock.

The game of musical chairs began again. Margaret crossed the country to Dundee and moved in with her recently widowed father. She took Macleod’s son with her, and Macleod followed like a hungry dog with Balfour close behind, determined to keep his wife.

Once again Balfour had to intervene to salvage his marriage. He chased Macleod back to Greenock and ordered him to take his son with him. Macleod left, his retreat possibly sweetened by his consolation prize, for he had transferred his affections from Margaret to her younger sister, a girl of sixteen. Satisfied he had regained his wife, Balfour returned to sea.

In late 1825 Balfour was shipwrecked off the west coast of England. Such occurrences were part and parcel of a seaman’s life, and he returned to Dundee as a passenger on a packet ship. When he arrived home his wife refused to let him in, saying, ‘You have got Macleod’s boy away, but it will cost you dear.’ She spoke the truth, and Balfour had only his own thoughts and the wet December streets for company. He returned home at night and despite opposition from his wife’s brothers, stayed until morning, but Margaret was anything but friendly and her brothers gave Balfour unpleasant advice to leave Dundee. When he tried to win Margaret back the next day she swore at him and said ‘she loved Torquil Macleod’s finger better than his whole body’.