A Sink of Atrocity: Crime in 19th-Century Dundee (4 page)

‘Who’s there?’

The whispering ended, but muted threats hissed through the dark, followed by a pregnant silence. The watchmen returned to their posts at the grave, glancing into the sinister dark, wondering who was out there, how many there were, and if they had been scared away. The answer came about half an hour later, when there was a whistle from one edge of the Howff, with an instant reply from the other. Then came calls in what might have been a code but was certainly in words that the watchmen found incomprehensible. Then silence again, and the gravestones, unconcerned, stood in the stern darkness.

That night passed slowly, but the watchmen had no more alarms. They returned to their post the next night, no doubt a little more apprehensive, but also more prepared. As well as their lanterns they carried pistols and were ready to defend their position. Even so, the first part of the night passed peacefully, but about half an hour after midnight the watchmen saw movement among the gravestones and the yellow glow of a lantern.

‘Who’s there?’ the watchmen called again and added that they were armed and would shoot anybody who came near the grave they guarded. There was no reply, but the scuffling continued so both watchmen fired, one after the other, the orange muzzle flare bursting the dark and the roar of the shot tearing apart the silence of the night. The result was immediate: the hollow thump of running feet and the creak of a door as the body snatchers made a quick retreat. Once again the watchmen had guarded their charge well. They picked up a spade and sack the intruders left behind as sure proof of their intentions, but listened with some concern to the threats that were shouted from the other side of the boundary wall. However, the watchmen could be satisfied; the remainder of that night passed peacefully.

The watchmen were back the next night, but so were the Resurrectionists. It was shortly after ten o’clock, dark and crisply cold, when the watchmen turned up for duty. As they stepped into the night, one immediately gave a cry and vanished foot-first into a gaping hole where the grave should be. The body snatchers had come early and had already dug half-way down to the coffin. As the watchman struggled to escape from the grave, two shadowy figures emerged from the night, but rather than threats, the men offered bribes, saying if the watchmen looked the other way they would be rewarded.

True to his salt, the watchman refused, which was a brave thing to do when he was up to his knees in a freshly dug grave. The nearest body snatcher reacted instantly, swinging his spade at the second watchman. The blow missed; the watchman drew his pistol, moved forward to take hasty aim but stumbled over a grave and swore as the priming of the firing pan fell out. He cursed again as he reloaded, but by then the Resurrectionists were retreating through the ranked gravestones. The watchman fired anyway, the shot going nowhere as the intruders scurried over the wall and vanished. Chasing them through the dark graveyard, the watchman tripped over something, looked down and realised it was a sack containing a freshly dug-up body. The glazed eyes of elderly Jean Anderson stared sightlessly up at him.

Naturally, with Dundee already on edge with the threat to their deceased, the sound of gunshots and shouting brought crowds, all asking questions, all looking for scapegoats. Two visitors from Edinburgh, probably entirely innocent of any attempt to unearth a Dundonian corpse, became targets for the fear and anger of the mob. As the crowd turned angry, the visitors pleaded for police protection. After a night in the cold cells of the Town House they may have wished they had chanced the mob, but they managed to persuade the police they were not grave robbers.

Early on Tuesday morning, a huge crowd of women, sprinkled with a few dozen men, squeezed into the Howff. There was no reason for being there, no Resurrectionists to chase and nothing to do but ask each other what was happening, voice their anger and search for somebody, anybody, on whom to fix the blame. Around seven in the morning Begg the gravedigger appeared with his wife, and the frightened mob turned their anger on them. Surging forward, they threw both into an open grave and crowded around, chanting, ‘Bury them alive, bury them alive!’ Despite the threats, the Beggs scrambled clear and fled, ducking and dodging as the mob pelted them with stones and turf. Reaching their home, they cowered there until noon when Begg was summoned to fill up an open grave.

Strangely, the crowd were quiet while he worked, but once the coffin was covered and the turf levelled, they again began their attacks, hurling abuse and missiles at the unfortunate gravedigger. Once again Begg had to run home and the crowd remained where it was, packing the burial ground and overflowing outside the gates. It was late afternoon before the Dundee magistrates ordered the Howff cleared, but the people were reluctant to go. They protested but eventually obeyed, amidst much grumbling and muttered threats against any Resurrectionist they should happen to catch.

With many of the crowd still watching suspiciously from outside the walls and the slight eminence to the south, Jean Anderson was returned to her rightful place under the turf. The authorities questioned Mr Begg, the watchmen and Mrs Duncan, a nearby resident who claimed to have seen some men acting suspiciously among the graves. However, nothing was learned that helped catch the body snatchers.

Not surprisingly, feelings in Dundee remained high. Immediately after the weekend skirmishes, the Town Council recruited two watchmen to mount a nightly guard over the burial ground and ordered one of the town officers to help whenever he could, but the Howff was large, the nights were dark and the Resurrectionists were cunning and could be violent. More security was needed. Somebody proposed knocking down the tall surrounding walls and replacing them with a low parapet topped by iron railings so passers-by could see into the graveyard and grave robbers could not hide in dark shadows. However, the tall walls remained in place and people continued to fear for the peace of their departed. Equally abortive was a suggestion to build a house at the entrance and install a guard with a pack of mastiffs.

As the ideas rolled in, the paranoia continued. When one of the town scavengers died in the infirmary, many of his friends and family came down from the Highlands for the funeral. There was no trouble until Dr William Dick ordered the coffin carried to the burial ground, but then the Highlanders steadfastly refused to move. They obstructed everything and everybody, turning what should have been a dignified procession to the graveside into something of a riot. As usual in Dundee, a crowd gathered to watch the fun and soon the rumour spread: the Highlanders believed somebody had stolen the scavenger’s body and sold it to an anatomist. When the protests grew unbearable even Dr Dick agreed to check. The coffin was placed on the ground, the lid unscrewed and the Highlanders crowded round to see the dead body of the scavenger. Once they were satisfied, the procession continued and the coffin was decently interred. It was a minor story, but one that reveals the impact Resurrectionists had on Dundee.

As the grave-robbing spree continued and people began to get ever more nervous, the burgesses of Dundee debated how to protect their dead. They met in the Howff in March 1826 but news of the meeting had leaked and over 300 people crowded into the graveyard. Inevitably there was chaos, until a brave spokesman took the initiative and shouted out what the meeting was about. Only when the surplus population had drifted away was there any progress. The burgesses who remained crammed into the watch house and decided to put a more secure guard on the burial ground. Spurred by fear, they drew up a document of thirteen articles.

The burgess’ document stated they would form a body of ‘voluntary police … for preventing the violation of the graves by those unfeeling wretches who bear the ignominious title of Resurrectionists’. The anger in this statement is so obvious it nearly crawls out of the page and shouts down the centuries. Adding that ‘to prevent crime is more pleasant than to punish it’, the document sets out a plan to have watchers to ‘record anything unusual’. One man would be the ‘captain of the guard’ in charge of five others. They would watch the burial ground from the first day of November until the first of March and from sunset until six in the morning. There would be subscriptions into a general fund that would pay for fire, lights and weapons, but the guards must provide their own refreshments. The plan was well considered. Six armed men with the backing of the town and, it turned out, the approval of the magistrates. When a call for volunteers went out, there were 2,000 subscribers; the people of Dundee had a strong desire to look after their dead. Six were immediately chosen to man the watch that same Thursday night.

Perhaps it was because of the guard, or perhaps the previous gunfight at the burial ground had sent out a strong message, but there were few scares at the Howff after that date. While Cupar and Montrose had their grave robbers, and Edinburgh suffered the horrific depredations of Burke and Hare, Dundee was virtually secure from the Resurrectionists. There was only one more incident of note.

In February 1827 the grave robbers tried again. A party of three or four entered the Howff from the south side, where the wall was lowest and the entrance easiest. One man slipped inside and eased himself into the midst of the gravestones, but the watchmen were alert and moved toward him, with their lanterns casting yellow pools of light among the gravestones. The grave robber ran, clutched a rope his companions had thrown down the wall for him, but the watch were faster. One of the watchman lunged forward and thrust his makeshift weapon, a bayonet tied to the end of a pole, hard into the intruder’s buttocks. With a yell of ‘Murder!’ the man dropped on the far side of the wall and in spite of a hot pursuit by the watchmen, neither he nor his companions were seen again.

Although that was the last known attempt by the Resurrection men at the burial ground in Dundee, there was a final flurry of excitement in February 1829, just after the scares of Burke and Hare in Edinburgh. The Captain of the burying ground found one of the graves uncovered and suspected the watchmen themselves were digging up the dead. Calling the watchmen into the watch house, he locked the door and ran for the police, who escorted the watchers to the police office in St Clement’s Lane. When the police discovered that the relatives of the deceased had uncovered the grave, the watchmen were released.

The watchmen of Dundee remained in the graveyards for a few more years, but after the murders of Burke and Hare in Edinburgh the law was changed, making it easier for anatomists to legally get their hands on corpses; the need for that grisly trade had ended. The Anatomy Act of 1832 ‘provided for executors and other people legally in charge of dead bodies to give them to licensed surgeons and teachers of anatomy unless the deceased had expressed conscientious objection to being dissected’. With that Act, there was no longer a market for dead bodies and peace descended on the Howff. There was plenty other crime still in Dundee.

For much of the early nineteenth century, linen was Dundee’s staple industry. There was an extensive trade with the Baltic and Russia for flax, while sailcloth and other linen articles were exported to half a dozen destinations. With a thriving trade with the Mediterranean and northern Europe added to the mix, it is not surprising that there were thousands of seamen based in Dundee and as many again visiting from other ports. It was nearly inevitable that many of these men spent time and money in Dundee’s pubs and some called in at the lodging houses that doubled as brothels. It was also inevitable that some should end up on the wrong side of the law.

Most of the crimes were petty – simple theft or drunken misbehaviour. For example there was the smartly-dressed seaman James Johnstone who was fined five shillings for simply ‘lurking’ in the passage of a house in the Seagate in November 1824, or the three apprentices who in October 1825 stole a warp and ropes from a Perth smack because a seaman on the vessel said it was all right, or the seaman from the Aberdeen schooner
Dee
who was fined half a guinea for using abusive language to people in the Perth Road in November 1826. None of these crimes would shake the foundations of the city, but when similar incidents took place day after day, night after night, they would be an irritation to the citizens.

Ships moored in harbour were tempting targets for the petty thieves and juvenile vagabonds of the port. One example out of many was the case in January 1826, when two boys were caught robbing the cabin of the whaling ship
Estridge
. They had four days on bread and water to ponder their actions. Just over a year later four young sailors, together with a woman named Susan Frazer, plundered the brig
Scotia
. While two of the seamen were handed thirty days each, Frazer, a known thief and troublemaker, got sixty days in jail. By 1839 the penalties had become even stiffer as a man named James Stalker was given a full year in jail for thieving articles from the whaling vessel
Fairy
.

On other occasions stranger mariners, those who did not belong to Dundee, caused the trouble. In August 1823 an English seaman had participated fully in the hospitality of Dundee’s taverns and was weaving his way about the docks. Drunken seamen were easy prey and a bunch of hooligans attacked the stray Englishman as he searched for his ship. By the time the sailor escaped he had been considerably roughed up and was looking for revenge. Finding a pistol on his ship, he returned to the shore, but rather than hunt for the men who attacked him, he fired at random, shooting at everything and anybody from the bottom of the Seagate all the way to the High Street. The watchmen eventually hustled him to the lock-up house for the night. Luckily the Englishman’s aim was no better than his judgement, for he injured nobody in his shooting spree.

In June 1825 a trio of stranger mariners appeared in Dundee’s Police Court for causing a riot in Jamieson’s pub in the High Street. The sequence of events is probably familiar to most Dundee policemen and publicans today. The three men were drinking quite happily in Jamieson’s most of the afternoon, but they took a glass too many and began to sing. Either they were too raucous or the song was too bawdy, for Jamieson asked them to quieten down. Instead they drank some more, so Jamieson sent for help. The arrival of the police signalled a general melee and when one seaman, James Brown, kicked down a partition wall within the pub, Sergeant Thomas Hardy arrested him. It took four police to carry Brown to the police office, where he was held overnight with his two companions, John Wilson and John Wyllie.