A Sink of Atrocity: Crime in 19th-Century Dundee (30 page)

Neighbours in nineteenth-century Dundee seemed to have an open door policy, with keys and locks not used, for Hutcheson followed into Rhynd’s house, grabbed Julia Ann by the hair and dragged her screaming back to her own house. It is unclear what his intentions were, but he thrust her into a chair, knelt on her and tried to tie her hands together. Fighting free, Julia Ann dived for the door but Hutcheson grabbed her again and dragged her to the window. Holding her firmly, he opened the window and threw her onto the roof outside.

‘You haven’t got another hour to live!’ Hutcheson promised, and for a while it seemed as if his prophesy was correct.

Four stories up on the steeply sloping slates of a tenement roof on a dark December evening, Julie Ann would have been terrified. Grabbing the gutter of the window, she lay there, calling for help as the Seagate traffic rumbled past far below her. It was about an hour before Constable Alexander Scott appeared, opened the window and eased her back into the house. By then Julia Ann was shivering with cold, terrified, battered, sore and bleeding from the mouth, but her husband was completely unrepentant, claiming she had gone onto the roof of her own free will. Sensibly, Constable Scott guided her away from Hutcheson and into the house of another neighbour, Mrs Fisher, where Julia Ann was examined and found to have bruises and injuries on her face, legs, hands and other parts of her body. Even when the case came to the Sheriff Court on 15th January she was so weak she had to sit while giving evidence.

Sheriff Cheyne listened as Hutcheson denied he had ill-treated his wife, claiming she had hit him with the washing board and then climbed out the window herself. When he heard the testimony of the neighbours and the police, the sheriff had no difficulty in deciding that Julia Ann was telling the truth. He gave Hutcheson sixty days with hard labour.

Domestic assaults were so common throughout the century that even to list them would take many pages. Some of the cases were sickening in their brutality, all were sordid, many were drink-related and probably most were caused by a combination of stress, frustration and alcohol. A few examples out of the hundreds will be enough to give a flavour and an idea of the extent.

In July 1824 a drunken man began to wreck his own home in Dallfield Walk. When his wife tried to stop him he attacked her instead, but the noise they made drew a crowd who saved the woman and carried the man bodily to the lock-up house. The following month an Irishman from East Port came home drunk at two on a Sunday morning to find his wife waiting up for him. Although she was heavily pregnant he beat her so badly she nearly died. In December a man protested he had the right to beat his wife because she was having an affair, a story she emphatically denied. That same month a painter called George Ingram attacked his wife with an axe and an iron bar. Despite her severe wounds he was only fined.

January 1825 started the same way with a flax dresser named Alexander Kidd fined seven guineas for assaulting both his wife and another woman who tried to protect her. It continued with Mrs Clark of Tindall’s Wynd running to the police office with a claim her husband threatened to murder her. The court bound him over with a £10 penalty for his future good behaviour. That month a woman who lived in the Wellgate was thrown into the Town House jail for six days on bread and water for attacking her husband. The same Police Court fined a labourer 5/4, not for assaulting his wife, but for beating up an old woman who tried to protect her when he was hitting her.

And so it continued: sordid tragedy week after depressing week. In February 1826 a scavenger named John Hughes was charged with two assaults on his wife but dismissed as there was no evidence. In March a seaman named Innes was found guilty of a brace of assaults on his wife; in August 1826 a carter who lived in the cesspit of Couttie’s Wynd was fined for assaulting his wife. In one court at Christmas 1828 there were seven cases of wife beating, in another in October 1829 there were three.

The 1830s followed the same pattern with, for example, a case in August 1837 when a flax dresser named James Whyte attacked his wife Elizabeth Wilson and her sister Sarah in his Small’s Wynd house. He spent the next thirty days in jail. A month later another flax dresser named William Cruden hit his wife Elizabeth Pert with a besom. Cruden was jailed but it was neither his first or last offence. In 1839, when the couple lived in the Upper Pleasance, Cruden was released from jail and came straight home. When Elizabeth saw him she ran out of the house and tried to hide with a neighbour, locking the door behind her. Forcing his way in, Cruden found her and, with no provocation at all, attacked her. He was arrested again and faced the judge at the autumn Circuit Court, who finished Cruden’s wife beating career by sending to Australia for seven years.

This decade also saw the case of Robert Bain, the Overgate weaver who on a July Friday in 1835 arrived home drunk and demanded tripe. When his wife said she had none, he changed his order to whisky, but again the cupboard was bare so he attacked her. She tried to escape out of the window but he hauled her back in and kicked her up and down the house, making so much noise that the neighbours called the police. When he stood before the court Bain faced his bandaged and bruised wife and said she had attacked him with a poker and her wounds were self-inflicted.

‘It must have been a very soft poker,’ said the judge, and gave Bain sixty days.

The 1840s were no better, with, for instance, the shoemaker Robert Stewart of Fish Street fined twenty shillings in July 1840 for coming home drunk, pulling his wife out of bed and kicking her. Then there was Thomas Cadger the flax dresser and George Crabb the carpenter who both appeared at the Police Court on 8th June 1843 for assaulting their wives, and the ugly case in October 1843 when a hawker named Connor stabbed his wife Helen several times.

The pattern did not change as the years passed. Most cases were men attacking their wives, but there were always a few when the woman was the aggressor. There was another serial wife beater in the 1860s when Alexander Peebles, a weaver, seemed to specialise in attacking his wife. In 1862 and again in 1863 he appeared in court for punching and kicking his wife, the second time ending in jail for thirty days.

Often the punishments seem ludicrously small when the nature of the assault is detailed. In September 1873 James Hendry of Albert Street in Lochee was given thirty days in jail for wife assault. He had come home, locked the door and pocketed the key, punched his wife Sarah in the face, cracked her over the head with a walking stick so the stick broke, hit her again and dragged her around the house by her hair. Unable to escape by the door, Sarah had to open the window and jump into the street. Thirty days seems very little for putting his wife through such an ordeal. On other occasions the court probably got it right. On Christmas Day 1874 John Fox of Miller’s Pend, Scouringburn, attacked his wife with an axe, inflicting wounds on her head and shoulders. The judge and doctor at the Criminal Sheriff deemed him insane and ordered him detained in prison at Her Majesty’s pleasure.

Wives, too, were capable of extreme violence. In July 1857 Margaret Hurley of Highland Close, Overgate took a knife to her husband John and sliced off part of his nose. Although a doctor sewed it back on, he remained disfigured for the rest of his life. On 11th September 1866 an elderly couple from the Beach in Broughty Ferry fell out, possibly over another woman. Mrs Mooney took a knife, cut her husband’s throat and slashed him across both temples. As Mooney’s daughter and a neighbour jumped to save her father, Mrs Mooney tried to cut her own wrists. The knife was wrested from her but she ran away. A doctor attended to Mooney and the police caught Mrs Mooney after a chase through the streets of Broughty.

Third parties and extra-marital affairs were responsible for quite a few domestic disputes. For example, in 1872 Euphemia and Archibald White of Arbroath separated. They had eleven children, but married life was not always smooth. Archibald was a drinking man and when his bouts became increasingly obnoxious, Euphemia left him. The children had always supported their mother in the marital disputes, so accompanied her when she moved to Dundee.

Despite their differences, the Whites remained on relatively friendly terms, with Archibald doing his bit to bring up their children. One by one the children left home to create their own lives until only the eldest daughter, Charlotte, remained. Things jogged along peacefully until March 1875, when Euphemia met another man and then her behaviour altered. She began to drink, and then she emptied the house of chairs, bedclothes and everything else she could wrap her hands around.

When Charlotte informed her father of her mother’s behaviour, Archibald followed Euphemia to her home in Littlejohn Street, by Dudhope Crescent. Rather than persuade her to return, Archibald began to reclaim the family’s possessions, but Euphemia would have none of it. Lifting a carter’s whip that happened to be lying around, she thumped Archibald on the head with the handle and threatened to kill him if he carried anything away.

Charlotte did not see the assault and this time did not take anybody’s side. She was so sick of her drunken parents she wanted to leave them both and move in with her siblings. When the case came to court, Bailie Edward found it not proven but said both parents should be proud of their daughter Charlotte for telling the truth and remaining sober and hard-working.

In the case of Michael Bourke of Bog in Lochee, it was mother-in-law trouble that caused him to assault his wife. That was in October 1886 and he had argued with his wife, who retaliated by throwing a boot at him, while his mother in law skelped him with the lid of a kettle. Bourke retaliated by hitting them both, but Sheriff Campbell Smith did not show any sympathy. Bourke had already appeared in court nine times for assault, so the sheriff gave him four months.

It was sometimes the case that a husband who abused his wife also turned his drunken anger onto his children. James Couper, a labourer from Hilltown was one such. He was in the habit of coming home drunk on Saturday nights and throwing his two sons out of the house. One Saturday in August 1882 he also threw out his wife. Somehow she returned back inside and spent the night hiding under the bed, but the two teenage boys remained in the passage outside until six the following morning. When the case reached the Police Court Couper was fined 15/-.

Mothers could be just as unpleasant to their children as fathers. Mrs Burns lived in a single room in an attic in Miller’s Pend, four floors up and facing onto the Scouringburn. She was a respectable woman who earned a precarious living sewing sacks, and was busy with her needle on a Monday afternoon in June 1889 when she heard a girl screaming. Within seconds there were feet rapidly pounding up the stairs and a young teenager burst through Mrs Burns’ unlocked door and begged for somewhere to hide. When Mrs Burns saw a drunken woman chasing the girl she closed the door, locked it from the outside and stood guard to protect the child. Rather than withdraw, the drunken woman attacked Mrs Burns. A neighbour, Mrs McGinnes, tried to help but the woman slapped her across the face. Meanwhile, the girl, hearing the commotion, opened the skylight window and climbed onto the roof. Four stories above the bustling streets and too terrified to move, she clung to the slates.

The sight of a young girl balanced on the roof attracted a crowd, who pointed to her and gave advice, but eventually Constable Jack appeared, rescued her and arrested the drunken woman. It had been a domestic quarrel between the drunk, Margaret Carr, and her daughter. While the mother was locked in jail for fifteen days, the child was sent for sanctuary to the poorhouse.

Violence, of course, was not just confined to family disputes. Sometimes only the victim was found, as happened at the end of March 1824 when a man was found lying bleeding in the Nethergate. His arm was broken and there were extensive injuries to his back. He died a few days later without anybody ever knowing what had happened, but it was suspected a gang of footpads had assaulted him. A few days later four men attacked a lone man near the Butterburn on the Strathmartine Road. One of the attackers was captured but the others escaped. Such attacks on travellers were fairly common throughout the century.

Sometimes the attackers escaped with valuables, as happened at the end of November 1824 when a brace of men and their dogs set upon a countryman in the Fairmuir, knocked him down and rifled his pockets. They escaped with his watch and a packet he had been carrying. At other times the reward was hardly worth the risk, as in the assault just off Crichton Street in September the same year when four men attacked a lone pedestrian at two in the afternoon. After a brief scuffle they ran off with his umbrella and his hat, closely pursued by a large crowd.

Although the image of Victorian violence is usually coloured by images of Jack the Ripper or the garrotting scares of the 1860s, the range of perpetrators was quite wide. Dundee was no exception. For instance in November 1853 in the Overgate, a broker’s wife drew a butcher’s knife on her servant and stabbed her on the arm and the neck. Sometimes assaults by the supposedly respectable members of society were utterly brutal, as in the case in August 1855 when a druggist named John Smith attacked his wife Janet Smith. Although she was pregnant, her husband cut off her clothes, punched her head and face, grabbed her hair and dragged her across the floor of their Princes Street house until her body was a mass of bruises and cuts.

Weapons were common in the assaults that marred Dundee’s streets. Wives smashed bottles over the heads of their husbands, men clashed pokers on their wives, belts were wrapped around fists and the buckles used to smash teeth and noses, sticks were common and in the 1860s, a time when many Britons looked over their shoulders in fear of garrotters, there was a rash of knuckleduster crime in the city. In December 1863 a sixteen-year-old apprentice mechanic named Alexander Raffan was arrested for using iron knuckledusters on a plumber named James Rose; he got sixty days for it. Another favoured weapon was simpler: a stone contained in a handkerchief. This was the weapon used by William Murray, a weaver, when he attacked James Fenton in Lochee’s Ann Street. He got thirty days and came out in February 1866. Fists and boots were normal, but Mary Weir broke the mould when she attacked Mrs Christie in Constitution Road. After punching Mrs Christie in the face, Weir drew a razor and slashed her across the neck.