A Sink of Atrocity: Crime in 19th-Century Dundee (10 page)

Save for the constant but necessary routine paperwork of his office and recapturing and incarcerating the banished Thiefy Doig, Mackay seems to have enjoyed a fairly quiet period over the next few months, but in June 1824 he was off on his travels again. A female pickpocket had charmed her way into the company of two visiting farmers, smiled sweetly, patted them fondly and relieved them of their pocket books and all their money.

When one of the farmers ran to the authorities for help, Patrick Mackay asked around his informants. Contacts on the fringe of the Dundee underworld were a vital component of the King’s Messenger’s armoury; Mackay discovered the pickpocket and her friend had boarded
Quentin Durward
, one of the steam packet boats that sailed between Dundee and Leith. Catching the next boat, Mackay apprehended both women and kept them secure in the police office in Edinburgh, from where they were brought back to Dundee and jailed.

Not all Mackay’s arrests involved a hectic dash across Scotland, however. Most were routine, such as the incident on Thursday 8th September 1824 when he again picked up previously-incarcerated David Scott, who had returned to Dundee despite a sentence of banishment. Two weeks later he arrested another well-known criminal, Rose Bruce, for exactly the same reason.

In October 1824 Mackay reached the peak of his professional career. Dundee was in a fervour about creating a new uniformed police force and debating who should be the first superintendent. It was not surprising that Patrick Mackay’s name should be mentioned and for a while it seemed that Dundee’s most energetic peace officer would be given the position of head of Dundee’s police. However, he was not selected for the post as he was already in a position of responsibility. Apparently he was too good at his present job to be spared. It would have been fascinating to see the impact an experienced and dedicated officer could have had on Dundee, but that was not to be.

The second half of 1825 was destined to be one of the busiest periods in Mackay’s career. On 2nd June he arrested David George, who was charged with attempted rape on the Coupar Angus Road. During the same week, Thomas Abbott, an ex-watchman turned weaver, was accused of stealing twenty spindles of yarn from the bleach field of Turnbull and Company. Abbott defended himself vigorously, claiming that the mill foreman had sold him the yarn, but while Mackay had not arrested Abbott, he did capture William Stewart, who bought the yarn. On 23rd June Mackay was again busy when he hunted four men, John Robertson, David Lamb, John Smith and George Thomson who had assaulted David Simpson of Wester Gourday near Longforgan Market. Leaving Dundee and travelling west, Mackay scooped three of them up, and completed the task by capturing the fourth, John Robertson, at Kingoodie.

Despite this constant run of success and his name being linked to the police superintendent’s job, Mackay found himself in trouble. Only a few days after Mackay arrested Robertson, John Home, the superintendent of police, accused him of employing Jeffrey Goddart, a serving police officer, as his assistant. While Goddart promptly resigned, Mackay argued that Goddart had only worked for him in his spare time, and never when he should have been on duty. Home pulled strings and found Goddart a job as town officer in Cupar, but the situation had revealed a tension between the new, raw police force and the established body of peace officers.

Despite this newly created division, Mackay had another success in July 1825, when he arrested Mrs Malcolm of Bucklemaker Wynd and Mrs Anderson of Nethergate for stealing and resetting yarn. In a textile town, such thefts were perhaps not unexpected.

On 11th November of that year, 1825, Mackay himself was involved in a violent situation. Together with his assistant and solicitor David Ramsay Forrest, and the Sheriff Clerk Depute, James Jones, he visited Mr Myles at the inn at Mile House, Lochee, to witness a disposition being signed by a duo of solicitors, James Lees and Ramsay Forrest. However, when there was a barrage of noise from an upstairs room, the landlord, Mr Souter, sent his maid to ask Mackay to remove ‘four blackguards’ who refused to leave. As soon as Mackay entered the room, three or four men attacked both him and Mrs Souter, who was also present.

Of the men in the upstairs room, three Lochee weavers, Robert McGavin, Andrew Taylor and John Gray, were the most aggressive. When McGavin knocked Mrs Souter aside, Mackay shouted, ‘Be still, that won’t do,’ and tried to intervene but had to block McGavin’s attack on him. Moving from defence to offence, Mackay grabbed hold of McGavin’s jacket, pushed him to the ground and knelt on him.

Hearing the commotion upstairs, Ramsay Forrest grabbed a pair of fireside tongs and rushed to help. He arrived in time to see Andrew Taylor attack Mackay, delivering a swift punch to the face and thumping him on the head and back until he released McGavin. Forrest, who seems to have been a handy man to have around, smashed the tongs into Taylor’s shoulder. Enraged, Taylor closed with him and they fought, with Forrest receiving brutal cuts on the face and one of his knees.

At this stage Mackay was on the ground, and a man described as wearing a ‘sailor’s suit’ was attacking him with a sharp object that, according to James Lees, ‘peeled’ the skin from his fingers. Mackay struggled free and escaped downstairs, bleeding heavily, as Taylor, having finished with Ramsay Forrest, turned his attention to Jones, the Sheriff Clerk Depute.

As quickly as it had erupted, the disturbance was over. The weavers poured down the stairs and into the street, leaving Mackay’s party to lick their wounds. Mackay was probably the most badly hurt, with three bleeding gashes on his head and another on his hand. James Lees had a bone-deep cut on his forehead; the solicitor David Ramsay also had a cut on his forehead and another on the top of his head, while Mrs Souter was understandably upset by the turmoil in her house. However, the excitement was not yet complete. Almost as soon as they were outside, McGavin and his band returned, hammering at the outside door with great stones as the people inside debated what was best to do.

Despite Mackay’s advice not to let them in, Robert Souter opened the door. Strangely, when the weavers returned the atmosphere had altered completely. After spending about quarter of an hour trying to kick pieces out of Mackay and his colleagues, now they said they wanted to come to some sort of agreement. Lees turned them down, but according to Mrs Souter, all the men were ‘good billies’ – good friends – and Mackay paid for half a mutchkin of whisky. It is an interesting scenario, but one that is difficult to believe, given that Mackay’s wounds seeped blood for some hours.

When the case came to court in April 1826, the defence lawyer attempted to lay the blame on Mackay, but the jury disagreed, and Lord Pitmully awarded Taylor nine months in prison, with Gray and McGavin receiving six months each.

After the excitements of 1825, the following year was comparatively quiet for Mackay, but there were still moments of drama. Around the time he gave evidence about his own assault, Mackay escorted the wife-murderer David Balfour to Perth for the Circuit Court. While others due to stand trial travelled by the steam packet, Mackay took Balfour in a chaise, passing crowds of people who had come to watch him go. In this case, the crowd were full of sympathy, for they knew Balfour had been sorely tested before he killed his wife.

That year Mackay also arrested Mrs Swan, an elderly midwife charged with assisting with an abortion, and he had an interesting episode in the Nethergate. The police had been watching John Robertson, whose house was notorious for the disreputable crowd that gathered there, but they did not have enough proof to arrest him. Then in early December of 1826 there was a robbery in Auchtermuchty in Fife and a man named Robert Anderson was arrested and placed in the jail in Cupar. Anderson mentioned Robertson’s name to Inglis, the local jailer, who in turn came to Dundee and approached Mackay.

Mackay and Inglis searched Robertson’s house very thoroughly, with Robertson watching, knowing that previous searches by the police had found nothing. This time, however, Mackay was on the job. He found a secret cupboard, full of watches, silk handkerchiefs and other portable valuables. When he saw his hoard was discovered, Robertson made a quick dash to climb out the window, but he was stopped, and along with his wife, Elizabeth, and a certain David Walker, was escorted to Dundee jail. The material Mackay and Inglis found was later identified as having been stolen in Auchtermuchty and St Andrews.

Strangely, it was again the closing months of 1827 that saw Mackay break out of the normal routine of his job. As Messenger-at-Arms he was responsible for ensuring that convicted prisoners were taken to whatever jail they had been consigned to. On 4th October 1827 Mackay and two of his assistants were escorting three men onto the smack
Glasgow
to be taken to English hulks prior to being sent to Australia. All six had to board a small boat that would take them to the smack, and as the convicts were handcuffed together, they had to step on the gunwale of the boat simultaneously. The sudden weight capsized the boat, sending all six into the water of the wet dock. It was nearly an execution rather than transportation. Fastened together, the convicts could not escape, but fortunately one of Mackay’s assistants was an excellent swimmer and dived under the water to unlock the handcuffs. Sodden wet but alive, the convicts were dragged on board the smack and Mackay had another small adventure to add to his list.

In 1828 there were a number of minor incidents. In May Mackay sent one of his assistants to arrest Alexander Gordon, an Auchterhouse smuggler. Gordon was a daring man who had been arrested and held in Forfar Gaol, preparatory to standing trial at the High Court. Rather than face the judge, he escaped and remained free until Mackay’s man put on the handcuffs. Three weeks later Mackay picked up four men accused of assaulting a seaman walking along the Perth Road. It was a fortnight before he learned that two of the men were actually trying to save the seaman from the others, and the case collapsed when the victim returned to sea.

After that frustrating experience, Mackay’s next arrest must have given him more satisfaction, when he brought in John Dean, a millwright from Feus of Carnoustie, accused of forging an £18 bill. At that period Dundee was notorious for supposed lodging houses, a name that was a cover for brothels, and it was often these places that were notorious hideouts for thieves. In September 1828 Mackay made a tiny dent in the proliferation when he travelled to Perth to arrest a young prostitute named Easson, who had robbed one of her customers that March. In July the following year he made a significant arrest when he captured a man named Low who had assaulted and attempted to rape a farmer’s wife. In 1830 he arrested Billy Cook in Ogilvie’s Close, Fish Street. Cook was a noted forger and Mackay scooped up over £52 in forged silver money, but frustratingly the sheriff freed Cook because there was no proof he had actually made the coins or used them as currency.

That was Mackay’s last major arrest. He died of consumption on 9th August 1833, aged just forty, and the criminal fraternity of Dundee would have breathed their relief if they did not have other worries. The professional beat bobby, with his top hat, rattle and truncheon, was now patrolling the streets, and if the police had a lot to learn about crime prevention, they were growing better every year.

In 1824 the first Dundee Police Force came into existence. In the opinion of some, it was not a moment too soon, as the watchmen, or ‘Charlies’, seemed swamped by an increasing tide of crime. Armed with a long staff or baton, the watchmen carried a lantern to help them through the dim streets of Dundee. They had specific beats, and if they were in need of help they could either bang the butt end of their staff on the cobbles or ‘spring their rattle’. This rattle was a large wooden affair, which when ‘sprung’ or rotated created a distinctive noise that would bring all other watchmen within earshot. However, as their wages came from subscribers and not the town, and those subscribers were the property owners of the area they patrolled, they were responsible only for their own specific beat and nowhere else.

The Charlies were natural targets for the unruly or drunken who infested the mostly-unlit streets, and by 1821 assaults were common, as in the case on the night of Saturday 6th January when four men attacked two watchmen in the Murraygate. Despite being outnumbered, the watchmen gained the upper hand and chased their attackers up the Wellgate, where a second scuffle began. This time the attackers won, with one man cracking a watchman over the head with his own baton. However, three of the attackers were later arrested, with housebreaking and robbery added to the charge for good measure.

On Saturday 16th February 1821 a gang roamed the Nethergate, first attacking an innocent servant and then assaulting the watchmen, who nevertheless managed to arrest three of them. Despite the odds against them, their efforts were pointless. Two of the men were freed due to a lack of evidence and the remaining man only fined a guinea. Yet the much derided watchmen did have the occasional success.

On Tuesday 19th of February a watchman was at home in the West Port when the door was forced open and a well-known thief named Francis Christal burst in, demanding money. Showing his official staff, the watchman announced who he was and arrested Christal instead, but even when caught red-handed the thief was only given two days in jail and released on his word of honour to leave Dundee.

Perhaps this lack of support, and the ludicrously meagre sentences awarded to the criminals they did catch, caused some frustration among the watchmen. In October 1821 a number of them caused their own riot in the street.

The trouble began when a couple of half-drunken carters accused a watchman of sleeping at his post and demanded he do his job and shout out the hours. Whether the watchman had been sleeping or not, he overreacted by grabbing hold of one of the carters and springing his rattle to summon support. More watchmen arrived but rather than calming the situation they beat up the carter. The carter’s shouts brought a crowd, who the watchmen decided to arrest. Within a few moments a struggling mob filled the street. Some of the watchmen’s lanterns were smashed, a handful of people arrested and then rescued by their comrades, but when the dust cleared the watchmen got the blame. Two lost their positions and the town authorities decided a captain should be appointed to keep them under control.