A Sink of Atrocity: Crime in 19th-Century Dundee (31 page)

However, Robert Cunningham probably deserves the accolade for the most unusual weapon. He was a man with a bad record of violence, with seven convictions for assault, three of which were on police constables, but he was also had a bad leg and in March 1884 he used his crutch to attack two policemen on Victoria Road. Sheriff Cheyne had little belief in his promise to reform if he was treated leniently and gave him four months.

Overall, Dundee could be a violent place, but compared to other cities, it was relatively peaceful. There were few really violent professional criminals and the organised gang troubles that infested places such as Manchester and Glasgow were notably absent. Drink or domestic disputes seem to have been the root of most of the assaults, and in most parts of the town the streets were comparatively safe.

A Victorian policeman’s life was never easy. He worked long hours, walked many miles, mixed with the worst people in the country and had to follow strict rules. The police had one week’s holiday a year. By the 1860s his uniform and equipment was fixed and would remain constant for the remainder of the century. He had a cape with a strap; a staff or truncheon that fitted in a long inside pocket, a belt, one pair of leggings, two great coats and two dress coats, uniform trousers and two reinforced hats, leather neck stocks that gave some protection against possible strangulation, cleaning materials, a rattle, a lantern and a pair of handcuffs.

The truncheon he carried would be painted and decorated. There are a number of these items held in the McManus museum in Dundee. One is of turned wood with the top and bottom section painted black and nicely varnished. On the top is a painted crown with the letters VR in blue, red and gold and a number, presumably of the officer, at the bottom. At 658mm long and 34mm diameter, it is quite a formidable weapon. An earlier version is similar in size, with the top and the lower two-thirds again painted black and a gold and red crown at the top together with W IV R. These truncheons served both for protection and as a means of identification: warrant cards were not issued until much later in the century.

Handcuffs were carried in the pocket and were probably of the ‘D’ pattern, so called because they were shaped like the letter ‘D’. They were worked with a large key that screwed into either edge, but the procedure took some time, and once locked they could not be adjusted. If they were too large for the prisoner, he or she could slip free. If too small, they painfully constricted the prisoner’s wrists. Again, there is an example in the museum at Dundee, together with the much less elaborate ‘shangie’, a 330mm-long article with a wooden handle and length of rope that was looped around a single wrist of the offender. The rattle was a large wooden device used to summon help if required; it was carried in a coat pocket and remained in use until whistles appeared in the 1890s. The lantern, of a bull’s-eye pattern that could be used to direct a narrow beam of light, could also burn the policeman’s fingers and often left a film of soot on his uniform and face.

In 1861 the average height of a Dundee policeman was five foot nine and three quarters; tall for a town where bad living conditions dramatically curtailed growth. That same year saw a number of promotions within the force as Lieutenant McQueen became governor of Dundee Prison and 2nd Lieutenant James Christie took his place as lieutenant; others also took a step up as James Cathro moved from Sergeant Major to 2nd Lieutenant, John Hills from Sergeant to Sergeant Major and William Ruxton became a sergeant. For those at the top, there were also good rewards, with Superintendent Mackay having a salary of £50 a week from 1870. The police were now established and accepted as part of Dundee society.

During the 1860s the police continued their successes. In May 1862 there was a theft of two silver watches in Blairgowrie and the thief jumped on a train to Dundee. The local police telegraphed the force in Dundee, who caught the thief as he arrived at the station. In June 1863 Constable Wales made a bit of a name for himself by tracing a thief. About half past two on the morning of Tuesday 23rd June he was walking past Doig’s Entry in the Overgate. Hearing something suspicious, he entered the close and followed a paper trail of letters until a man rushed past him and into the Overgate. Wales chased him, joined by a dozen eager Dundonians.

At that time there was a quarry in Lindsay Street, and as the suspect ran, he threw a screwdriver into it. Wales caught him a minute later. With the suspect safely in custody at the police station, Wales returned to Doig’s Entry and found a portable writing desk still with some letters inside. Some were addressed to Mr Robert Fleming, Airlie Place. Together with Inspector Rennie, Wales examined Fleming’s house. A window catch had been forced, a desk opened and a rosewood writing desk stolen. The man Wales arrested was a seaman from London who called himself Thomas Williams.

Wales’ success was just a drop in a flood of crime that threatened to engulf the whole country. While the government passed more severe penalties for violent crime, in December 1868 Dundee reeled under a rash of assaults and robberies. There was a man garrotted and robbed outside the Royal Lunatic Asylum, and another attacked in South Lindsay Street, a robbery at Shaw and Baxter’s factory in North Tay Street which ended with the place being set on fire, a couple of robberies in the same night in Long Wynd and a burglary at a spirit shop in Perth Road. The police were more efficient, using the telegraph system, and in 1873 obtaining a prison van to transport the criminals, but the criminal element also knew every trick.

As well as the opportunist thieves and drunken brawlers, there were bad men who lived their lives on the dark side of the law. Alexander Dow was one of these. He claimed to come from Arbroath but drifted from place to place as the fancy took him. His first criminal appearance was before the court in Aberdeen in June 1861 when he was given three months for theft. The next year the Aberdeen sheriff gave him eighteen months, which either taught him caution or put him on the right side of the law, for it was not until May 1867 that his name next appeared, when he ended in jail for just sixty days. By April 1868 Dow was operating in Dundee, where the Circuit Court welcomed him with an eighteen-month sentence. He was hardly out before he was back in again, this time for police assault. In October 1871 he haunted the crowds that gathered at the grand opening of Balgay Park, but the police caught him stealing a gentleman’s watch and he was back before the judge. With his long record he could not expect any mercy and the April 1872 Circuit Court awarded him seven years’ penal servitude. Dow must have been a hard man to survive this nightmare and come back for more, but in 1882 he appeared before the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh and gained yet another seven years.

Despite his record, Dow was released early on a ticket-of-leave but rather than try to keep straight, he returned to the only way of life he knew. More a thief than a man of violence, Dow liked to ply his pickpocket trade in the railway stations. His
modus operandi
was to board a busy train, get off further down the line and mix with the crowd and see whose pocket he could dip before returning to a different carriage in the same train. At that time the train would be of the corridor type, rather than the long, open-plan variety that are used today. Perhaps old age and repeated confinement were catching up with him, or maybe he was never really adept at his job, but a Ladybank policeman saw Dow with his hand in a lady’s pocket.

Grabbing Dow, the policeman thrust him into a carriage and searched him but found nothing. Certain that Dow was a thief, the policeman held him secure until the train reached Perth, where he was bundled out and arrested. When Dow was again unsuccessfully searched, the police had the carriage thoroughly taken apart. When they removed the door an upended it, a purse fell out; Dow had managed to slip it inside. The judge at Perth Circuit Court gave him eighteen months.

When he finished that term, Dow was retained in jail to finish the seven years from which he had been released. When he eventually returned to the world, he again reverted to thieving. In 1891 a Dundee detective arrested him at the Martinmas Feeing Market and in 1892 he was back in the city. In May of that year Dow found a drapery auction in the Hawkhill and stood at the back of the crowd as the largely female audience hoped for a bargain. He had just lifted a fat purse from a Lunan Bay fisher wife when a detective put a heavy hand on his shoulder and arrested him. Maybe Dow was a career criminal, but the police had career officers who also knew exactly what they were doing.

Compared to the other cities of Scotland, Dundee was very lightly policed. In 1880 Edinburgh had one policeman for every 532 citizens, Glasgow one to every 535, Aberdeen one to every 758 and Dundee one to every 967, but the authorities decided to add another six men to the force. Perhaps it was this slight reinforcement that brought down the crime rate in Dundee.

Throughout the 1880s police crime statistics saw a constant downturn that indicated they had succeeded in making the city a safer place in which to live. However, there were still enough incidents to make the honest citizens wary. Drunken assaults and common theft continued, and sometimes the theft was not quite so common.

In the 1880s, the Hawkhill was a busy place. The name covers both an area of Dundee and a long street that runs from the West Port in a roughly south-westerly direction until it meets the Perth Road at a Y-junction known as the Sinderins. As was common to most of the old-established streets in Dundee, there were a number of smaller streets, wynds or closes running at right angles from the Hawkhill. Along the front of the Hawkhill, and often situated at the corners where the main street met the wynds, there were a selection of public houses and shops. One of these shops, at the corner of the Hawkhill and Miller’s Wynd, was owned by David McGavin, who lived in the flat above. At about half-past seven on the night of 6th February 1888, McGavin said farewell to his final customer of the day, turned off the gas, locked the door and carried the keys upstairs to his house. As was normal in such corner sites, the shop had two doors, one in the Hawkhill and the other in Miller’s Wynd.

Seven hours later, at half-past two in the morning, Constable James Glen woke McGavin with the bad news that the shop door was gaping open. Not bothering to dress, McGavin rushed down the stairs and found both the Miller’s Wynd door and the back door open, and a quick examination found a skeleton key still in one of the locks. An investigation inside proved even more disturbing, with the counter drawer pulled right out and the safe, where McGavin’s money and papers were held, missing. He estimated there had been something in excess of twenty pounds in cash, as well as his title deeds. As the purpose of having a safe was to deter thieves, McGavin had possibly expected a burglar to try and break in, but he had no idea that somebody would steal the whole thing. The revelation came as a shock.

Constable Glen had checked McGavin’s shop at half past ten the previous night and found everything secure, but when he returned four hours later the door in Miller’s Wynd was open. At that time only the burglars knew what had happened.

Margaret Craig, however, had a good idea. She lived at 17 Watt Street and early that same morning she had been awakened by a ‘chap at the door’. Her shoemaker husband Hugh opened the door and two men walked in – Samuel Steel and Neil McPherson. It was disturbing enough for Mrs Craig to have two men enter her house in the wee small hours of the morning, but worse when she saw Steel carrying what she could only describe as a ‘big green box’. Mrs Craig was not the most serene of women and when it was obvious that something illegal was happening she became so agitated that her husband thought she was having a fit. He ordered the two men and their mysterious box out of the house.

Perhaps Mrs Craig thought that was the end of the affair, and that evening she left to visit her sister. But when she returned home about nine o’clock her house was full of men. As well as her husband, Steel and McPherson, there were two other men, James McDonald and James McKenna of Pennycook Lane. As soon as she stepped indoors, her husband asked McKenna to stand outside and then ushered his wife out again, taking her back to her sister’s where all three stayed the night.

The situation was ludicrous. Steel and McPherson had broken into McGavin’s shop and had found the safe. As they were unable to crack it on the premises, they were carrying it through the streets of Dundee, searching for some method of opening it. There were two reasons for choosing Craig: firstly because he was known to own some chisels, and secondly because McKenna, who was involved in the theft, had once employed him.

In the meantime, McKenna kept watch outside the house as the others chiselled their way into the safe and extracted the contents. Replacing Craig’s chisels where they had found them, they carried the broken safe outside. Bridget McMahon, a near neighbour, found it dumped in a back green behind 18 Watt Street and told the police. In the morning, James McDonald banged at the door of Mrs Craig’s sister’s house, woke up Hugh Craig and handed him four pounds, presumably in payment for use of his house and tools.

The police were already hard at work. Having been shown the discarded safe, they brought David McGavin to identify it and shortly afterwards an informer whispered an address to detective Hugh Patterson. It was fairly obvious that in a place as tight-knit as Dundee and as congested as the Hawkhill, somebody must have seen a group of men hefting a safe from door to door. When Patterson searched Craig’s house he found three chisels and a sledgehammer – not normally tools used by a shoemaker – and what was more damning, one of the chisels was still flaked with green paint. Craig, however, was missing, as were most of the other suspects.

It was not long before the telegraph wires were humming and police forces the length and breadth of Scotland were aware of the break-in and the suspects. The Edinburgh police arrested McKenna and Craig together and McDonald separately, while the other suspects were found in various corners of Dundee. At the beginning of May 1888 Neil McPherson and Samuel Steel appeared before Lord McLaren at the Dundee Circuit Court, charged with the theft, and some other details came out during the trial.